


Nine Lives

by on_my_toes



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Coffeeshop AU, Modern AU, i am alternate universe caffeinated trash, we all knew this was going to happen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-30
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-17 03:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 55,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5852041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/on_my_toes/pseuds/on_my_toes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The new barista at Jakku Java is going to give Ben Solo a god damn heart attack. </p><p>Multi-chapter coffeeshop AU with plot because I am the trash of the thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> One of y'all anons requested a Coffeeshop AU which I didn't know until this week I was secretly hoping for my whole life, so. Ta da!

The new barista at Jakku Java is going to give Ben a god damn heart attack. 

 

The first time he notices her, like actually notices her, it’s a Tuesday morning. He is sitting in his usual spot by the window, trying to finish up his paperwork before his shift at the hospital, when he hears … chanting. No — counting. He looks up, irate, and sees a small crowd surrounding two people in the corner. 

 

It’s two of the baristas — Finn, who’s been working there long enough that Ben remembers his name, and the scrawny new girl who started working in the back a few weeks ago. Their fingers are plugged up to their noses and their cheeks are comically swollen.

 

“118, 119 … That’s two minutes!” someone in the cluster around them shouts. 

 

The girl stamps her feet and crushes her eyes shut. Only then does it occur to Ben that the two of them are engaged in, of all things, a _breath holding contest_. 

 

It would be anxiety-inducing for a regular human. But as a doctor, watching all this go down made Ben’s skin itch. He came here to relax, dammit, not watch some college kids who _know better than this_ pass out on a tile floor. He turns his head abruptly, resolving not to let them break his focus. 

 

“130, 131, 132 — ”

 

They’re going to kill themselves, the idiots. He scowls over at them. The girl’s face is red enough that he is sure she is going to pop a vein, and Finn looks like he is starting to cry. He feels the muscles in his legs tense, poised to put a stop to it. Honestly, they deserve whatever the hell they get, but if one of them passes out then he’ll be obligated to _do_ something about it, and he really isn’t up to showing up to work with a couple of broken baristas. 

 

Mercifully, Finn gives up, heaving a horrible, mangled breath. Ben feels some measure of relief, expecting the girl to follow suit — only she doesn’t. Another second passes, and then another five, and she continues holding her breath, practically swaying on her feet —

 

His heart lurches in his throat, and just then she finally surrenders, smirking even as she starts heaving wretched breaths back into her lungs. The cluster cheers their victor, and Finn shamefacedly hands her a five dollar bill. 

 

“Morons,” Ben mutters under his breath. 

 

But it’s over. He turns back to his paperwork, his legs easing back into his chair, when out of the corner of his eye he sees the girl jump on top of the couch. When he turns she is still red-faced but triumphant, holding the five dollar bill in her hands. 

 

“Who’s next?” she cries. 

 

That’s it. He’s got _way_ too much to worry about to spare his precious time on some dumb coed with abnormally large lungs. Ben grabs his briefcase, shoves the paperwork inside, and leaves before the second round can begin. 

 

* * *

 

When he comes in the next day at his usual time, the girl is up at the register. His irritation is instant. Finn and Poe have his drink order memorized and usually have it ready to go before he gets to the front of the line, but now he’s going to have to sit here and wait for it on a day when he’s already late. 

 

He considers just leaving, but the idea of not getting his caffeine fix is too depressing to handle. Besides, the line moves quickly. In another minute she is staring up at him under the brim of her Jakku Java baseball cap, all light-eyed and freckled and smirky. 

 

He blinks, a little disarmed by the effect of her. “I’d like a — ”

 

“Your order’s ready,” she tells him, shoving a cup into his hand. 

 

“Oh.” 

 

He must look confused, because she shrugs. “Poe told me to have an espresso ready for some super tall dude in scrubs, so I’m guessing that’s you?” 

 

“Yes,” he says, feeling oddly self-conscious. “That’s me.” 

 

“Sweet.” 

 

She looks past him at the next customer, already poised for that automatic “haveagoodday,” when he finds himself opening his big dumb mouth. 

 

“You really shouldn’t make bets holding your breath,” he says. “It’s dangerous.” 

 

Her brow furrows up at him. “What?” 

 

“You could pass out. Hit your head. Suffer internal bleeding. Not to mention severely damage your lungs,” he says. He felt armed knowing all this, but seeing the blatant amusement crease into the lines of her face, he suddenly feels like a nerdy fifth grader who just got his first pair of glasses. 

 

“Noted,” she says with a polite nod. 

 

He stares at her for a second, his ears reddening, before nodding back and turning abruptly. 

 

“But I would totally crush you at it. Just so you know.” 

 

The words make him cringe. When he looks back at her she flashes him a cheeky smile that he does not return, then moves onto the next customer. He is thinking about how god damn annoying she is long after his espresso is gone. 

 

* * *

 

A few weeks later he is outside the coffee shop again when he hears the distinct slap of plastic wheels on cement; he looks up and sees a bunch of dumb college kids with skateboards, messing around near the steep stairs that come down from the pedestrian bridge above the coffee shop. One of the kids trips on the railing and falls and cusses as he skids; once Ben sees him get back up looking relatively unharmed, he turns his attention back to his phone screen. 

 

“Hah!” 

 

Only then does Ben see her, leaning against the brick wall with a limp-looking sandwich, evidently on her break and looking quite amused. 

 

The fallen skateboarder glowers at her. “I’d like to see _you_ try.” 

 

She shrugs. Shoves the rest of the sandwich her mouth. “Sure,” she says, her mouth still full as she walks over to the group of them. 

 

Ben should just walk the hell away from this — he’s hungry, and he’s tired, and he just wants to sink into his table at the coffee shop and read his damn book in the ten minutes he has before some inevitable commotion summons him back to the hospital during his on-call shift. 

 

And he does walk away. Or he starts to, at least. But as the girl extends her arm out for the kid to hand her the skateboard and then starts sprinting nimbly up the stairs with it, he finds his pace slowing to a halt. 

 

“You ever done this before?” one of the kids calls, half-mocking, half-concerned. 

 

The girl shrugs. “What’s the worst that could happen?” 

 

She’s kidding. She has to be. 

 

“She’s not gonna do it,” says one of the kids dismissively, echoing Ben’s thought. 

 

“Boo!” another one yells. 

 

“I have to finish my sandwich, you punks,” she answers back. 

 

She chews, swallows, then backs up quite a few feet, setting the skateboard on the ground and poising herself. Even then Ben is sure she isn’t going to do it — even the kids egging her on weren’t trying the full railing — but in the next she kicks her foot off the ground and she’s off with heedless kind of speed, her entire skinny body leaping into the air. 

 

Oh, Jesus. He’s going to watch the barista die. 

 

Only she doesn’t. He hears the scrape of wood on metal, and she’s _flying —_ so spectacularly that for a second his awe distracts him from just how colossally stupid she is being. He thinks she must have hustled them, that there’s no way she hasn’t done this before, and then —

 

“Shit, shit, shit!”

 

She’s _laughing_ as she goes down. Ben is trying not to choke on his own panic and she’s _laughing_ , mercifully falling to the right and getting caught in the bushes instead of the left, where she undoubtedly would have broken all of her god damn limbs on the concrete stairs. She rolls down the hill, still cackling as she pulls herself up, retrieves the skateboard, and gives a little bow; the kids below cheer, a genuine kind of cheer, and Ben’s blood surges. 

 

“Thank you, thank you,” she says with a grin, pulling herself out of the brambles. 

 

She is so busy mock-bowing that she doesn’t even notice Ben stalking toward her until he has yanked the skateboard out of her hands. She blinks up at him, the smile faltering on her face, a tiny trickle of blood running down a scrape on her forehead. 

 

He stands there stupidly for a moment. “Wear a god damn _helmet_ ,” he tells her, shoving the skateboard back into the kid’s arms with enough force that he stumbles back. 

 

Nobody speaks, and after another beat he turns and stalks back down the stairs. 

 

“Nice to see you too!” 

 

* * *

 

 

The incidents start piling up after that. He can only figure the girl is a cat about to run out of her nine lives. One day he walks in on her doing a one-arm handstand on a chair. Another day she gets into another dumb bet with Finn over who can fit the most gum balls in their mouth. Yet another day a smoker puts a lit cigarette in the trash can, and she beats down the flames with her apron without so much as batting an eye, until her god damn _sweater sleeve_ catches on fire. 

 

And she laughs. She’s always fucking _laughing,_ doing stupid, reckless shit and grinning with that crinkly nose and those bright eyes like she’s having a god damn ball while Ben is actively trying not to scream. 

 

The solution is simple: he stops going to the coffee shop. 

 

Okay, he doesn’t stop entirely. But he’s around enough that he has a sense for her schedule, and deliberately shows up when he knows she isn’t going to be there. He doesn’t see her for weeks, and his blood pressure finally returns to some semblance of normal, and he figures he’ll just have to wait her out a few more weeks until she gets bored and quits like every other college kid who blows through Jakku Java and he can have his damn coffee shop back. 

 

It’s all well and good until Phas, a resident of his, corners him in the break room and all but forces him to join the rest of her crew for a New Year’s Eve party. Ben refuses. He doesn’t mind working, for one thing, and god knows that the hospital could use it — but then stupid Hux seizes the opportunity to outshine him by volunteering for his shift, and before Ben knows it he’s at a nightclub full of sweaty, disgusting, highly-intoxicated _young_ people on the shittiest night of the year _._

 

“You are a young people,” Phas reminds him when he says just that. 

 

His grip is vice-like on his rum and coke. “Hardly.” 

 

“And this isn’t a shitty night. Loosen up a little, will you?” 

 

In his defense, he tries. He has two drinks. He even ventures onto the dance floor with Phas and some of the other people at the hospital for a few minutes. He might have even started enjoying himself, if it weren’t for _her_. 

 

He hears that laugh and he can feel that stress crick in his neck cropping up again before he even realizes who it’s coming from. When he turns around, he doesn’t see her at first — because she is on top of some guy’s shoulders, her hands up in the air, screaming the words to whatever intolerably loud song is blasting through the floor of the club. 

 

Of course. Of _course_. He tries to turn his head, but there she is in the periphery, swaying at a dangerous angle on top of this dude’s shoulders. They’re both clearly drunk off their rocker, or at least it seems this way from here, not that he _cares_ , except then he hears this little shriek and just _knows_ that it’s hers and the blood is rushing in his ears and he’s walking over and she’s practically falling off of him and —

 

“Put her _down_.” 

 

The other man scowls at him. “Who the fuck are you?” 

 

“Who the fuck am I, who the fuck are you?” Ben fires back. 

 

The guy’s face twists into a snarl, which is at once obscured by the girl’s hand, which she is using to pat him. “It’s okay, it’s fine, put me down,” she says. The guy obeys without taking his eyes off Ben, and the smiles up at him obliviously, thanks him for the ride, and then dismisses him with a wave. 

 

“Well, look who it is! Overly tall doctor!” she shouts over the music. “I haven’t seen you in ages.” 

 

“What the _hell_ is your problem?” Ben bursts before he can help himself. It’s not just the shoulder stint, it’s _weeks_ of biting his tongue and feeling his blood surge and his fucking hair probably going gray watching this girl’s complete and utter disregard for her mortality. “Every time I turn around, you’re getting into the _stupidest shit —”_

 

“Oh my gosh,” she says with a laugh, looking a little baffled by him, “hold on, would you just relax and — ”

 

“Relax? I’d _love_ to,” he says through his teeth, “but how can I do that when every time I turn around you’re holding the sharp side of a knife with your teeth, or doing backflips in the parking lot, or getting _tanked_ at a club on the most _dangerous_ night of the year — ”

 

“Whoa,” she says, cutting him off. “You think I’m tanked? I’m nineteen, overly tall friend. I’m the only sober one here.” 

 

He processes this, and then adds pettily, “Okay, so you’re being an idiot sober, then.” 

 

To his surprise — and really, at this rate, it shouldn’t be — she grins at him. “No, I’m being a life liver sober, which is more than I can say for you.” 

 

Chanting again. People calling out numbers. It’s the breath holding contest all over again, except this time people aren’t counting up, but down. 

 

She takes the rum and coke from his hand, and he’s about to yap at her for drinking underage, but instead of putting it to her lips she sets it back down on the bar. He stares at the drink for a moment, and then back at her; it’s the first time he has ever seen her face look still, smiling lightly at him instead of laughing or making one of those ridiculous, open-mouthed grins of hers. 

 

“ _Thirty, twenty nine, twenty eight …_ ” 

 

And then she’s tearing out of the club like a bullet, weaving and working her way through the crowd. He watches her, dumbstruck, thinking she is running away from him — but then she turns and sees he isn’t following, and jerks her chin at him with this little unspoken invitation. Another few seconds later she is shoving open a door that he didn’t even see, and they are spilling out into the alley, into the cold air. 

 

“What’re you — ”

 

“Come on,” she says. 

 

There’s a built-in ladder leading up to the roof, and she is scrambling up it; he doesn’t know what possesses him, but he follows her, feeling the pulse of the music inside the club vibrating in the flimsy metal handles. 

 

The chanting continues, getting louder, the whole city seeming to thrum with the anticipation. 

 

“Why are we on the god damn roof?” 

 

“It’s the new year,” she says, her eyes bright as she whips around to face him. “I’m not going to spend that shit _inside_.” 

 

He has no idea what the hell she means by that, when “inside” was perfectly fine and warm and socially acceptable to the rest of the humans they left behind, but she looks so earnest and hopeful and a little bit heartbreaking in that moment that she keeps his mouth shut. 

 

“ _Three, two, ONE!!!”_

 

And then the club erupts with noise beneath them, and light streaks across the sky, popping and crackling in their ears. She throws her hands up and lets out a happy little whoop as the fireworks shatter in the sky, swallowing each other up hole and fading into the night. He follows her eyes to them, feeling weirdly out of his own body — like he isn’t Ben Solo for a moment, but someone else entirely. Someone who feels things differently, who looks at the world differently, who doesn’t resent this girl for her very existence in the same ten feet of him. 

 

He feels something warm on his cheek. It’s over before he even realizes what’s happening; when he looks over at the girl, he can see the reflection of the fireworks sparkling in her eyes. He doesn’t say anything, staring back up at the sky, the ghost of her lips still burning into his cheek. 

 

They stand there in silence for god knows how long, until the finale, until the fireworks obliterate the sky and there is nothing but smoke and cold and police sirens and drunk people stumbling all over the street. He turns to her to tell her they ought to get down, and only then does he see her haphazardly swinging her legs over the roof edge, easing herself back down on the ladder. 

 

“By the way,” she says, with another one of those grins he is starting to dread. “My name’s Rey.” 

 


	2. Chapter 2

Ben starts going back to the coffee shop during Rey’s shift. It’s not worth the trouble of driving the extra half-mile to the slightly more expensive Starbucks down the street, he decides. That, and he is starting to wonder if the universe has made it his cosmic responsibility to make sure that Rey doesn’t die trying to surf on the top of someone’s moving car or whatever the reckless flavor of the week happens to be. 

 

She never mentions the cheek kiss again, and Ben finds himself equal parts relieved and annoyed in the aftermath. Relieved because she’s a _nineteen year old girl_ whose idea of actual romance probably stops short of her high school crush and the inevitable doomed first year college relationship, and he’s about as close to thirty as she is to twenty. Annoyed because it was unnecessary in the first place, particularly if she isn’t going to acknowledge it. 

 

Instead she beams at him like an overly-excited puppy every time he walks through the door and chirps a little, “Good morning, Doctor Ben!” And inevitably everyone turns around to stare at him, because she’s loud as hell and “Doctor Ben” sounds like a god damn Sesame Street character. He has entirely surrendered the idea of getting his coffee in peace. 

 

He hardly gets any of his paperwork done anymore, either. She’s always flitting by his corner. Wiping down tables, sitting a few feet away from him and frowning into a textbook on a break. She rarely interrupts him, but she doesn’t have to. Her presence is too loud to ignore. 

 

“Oh my god,” she says one day. He doesn’t look up, assuming she is addressing Finn, but then she says, “You have a tattoo.” 

 

He shoves his sleeve further up on his wrist, but it’s too late. Her eyes are gleeful, peeking up at him over the side of a biochem text book. 

 

“What’s it say?” she says. The chair across from him scrapes as she takes it without an invitation and sits herself in it. His irritation must be palpable, because she adds, “No, no, I think it’s _awesome_ , tell me.” 

 

The truth is he went through some dumb phase in college where he started a band called the First Order. Okay, so it possibly leaked into med school. Ben has gone to a lot of trouble burning down his Facebook history to hide all of the pictures Hux still tagged as “Kylo Ren” to torture him every other week. The roman numeral tattoo is just one more souvenir from that time he can’t quite shed. 

 

“You’re a biochem major?” 

 

“Yeah,” she says dismissively, yanking his sleeve up. “Is that a date?” 

 

The date they formed the band. He really hates himself for that. “Yeah, but it’s unimportant,” he says, pulling his arm out of her grasp. 

 

She yanks up the sleeve of own uniform, showing him the inside of her upper arm. “I’ve got one too,” she says. She yanks the sleeve back down just as quickly, but not before Ben sees that the date inked onto her is some eleven years prior. 

 

“What is yours for?” he asks before he can stop himself. 

 

She raises a finger up at him. “I asked you first.” 

 

“It’s dumb,” he says again. 

 

Rey shakes her head at him. “Even if it means nothing to you now, it meant something to you once.” She seems to unconsciously stroke her inner arm, where her own numbers are pressed into her skin. “That’s not dumb.” 

 

He bristles, uncomfortable with the solemnity of the conversation. “Why are you majoring in biochem?” he asks. 

 

Her brow furrows. “Same reason you did.” 

 

“You want to be a doctor?” 

 

She leans across the table at him, her eyes narrow with suspicion. “Is this the part where you go all wise and cryptic older dude on my ass and tell me I don’t know what I’m getting myself into?” 

 

“No,” he says, scowling. “I was just surprised.” 

 

“Why’s that?” she demands. “You don’t think I’d make a good doctor?” 

 

“Honestly?” he says, already miffed that, once again, this kid has compromised his valuable time with her exhausting way of being. He starts to gather his things, aware of the fire igniting in her eyes as he says, “You run around here like you’ve got a damn death wish, so I’m going to have to say no.” 

 

“Hold on,” she says, pulling out of her chair to follow him to the exit. “What the hell does that have to do with — ” 

 

“But if you ever need help with your studying, let me know,” he says harshly, his hand poised on the door. 

 

A beat passes. “Fine,” she snaps. 

 

He shoves the door open. “ _Fine_.” 

 

* * *

 

 

When he comes back the next day the parking lot is literally empty, and it occurs to him that it must be mid-winter break. He always forgets the mass exodus that happens around this time of year. It’s cold as hell upstate, though, so he can’t exactly blame the coeds for migrating down south. Let some other sorry fuck of an ER doctor deal with their alcohol poisoning and infected nipple piercings this weekend. 

 

When he walks into the shop, he is assaulted by the noise of chirp-chirp-chirping, and then the sight of Rey standing on a chair stacked on top of another chair fiddling with something on the ceiling. 

 

“What the _hell?_ ” 

 

Her eyes flit over to him and her balance wavers for a second. “I accidentally set off the fire alarm,” she says defensively. 

 

“Get down from there.” 

 

“I’ve almost got it — ”

 

She sways again. Oh, for fuck’s _sake_. He can’t stand here and watch this for another second. “Get down,” he says again, and when she ignores him, he reaches up and grabs her by the waist. She lets out a little yelp of surprise as he lifts her up from the chairs and sets her back down on the ground. 

 

For a moment the two of them stand there, equally red-faced, his hands still bracing her waist long after she has found purchase on the floor. 

 

“What the hell was that for?” she demands. “I had it under control — ”

 

“Under control my ass,” he mutters. He takes the second chair off of the first one and stands up on it himself, reaching up and pressing the off button a little more aggressively than necessary. The incessant chirping stops, and he steps down from the chair, glaring at her. 

 

Her arms are crossed, her face lined with a scowl. It occurs to him that he’s never seen her angry before. “What do you want, a parade?” she snaps. She looks wrung out, a little pale, her hair askew under her cap. “I was managing just fine without your overly-tall _tallness —_ ”

 

“You’re — ” Impossible. Stubborn. _Ridiculous_. “Why the hell are you still here, anyway?” 

 

“I work here,” she says, grabbing the chairs and all but shoving them back into their empty tables. 

 

“That’s not what I meant.” 

 

She finishes setting the chairs back and rights herself, glaring at him. “Do you want your espresso or not?” 

 

He glares back, suddenly hyperaware of the fact that the two of them are completely alone in this coffee shop. It’s like being in some strange alternate, apocalyptic universe. Or maybe hell. 

 

“Yes.” 

 

She stalks back behind the bar, metal on metal as she clangs her way through the process without so much as looking up to acknowledge him. 

 

“What set the fire alarm off?” he asks. 

 

Her back is turned to him. “What does it matter?” she mutters. 

 

“Well, if it went off once, it might — ”

 

“It went off because I’m a fuck up, okay?” she snaps, shoving the lid on his espresso. She hands it to him without making eye contact. 

 

“There’s, uh — there’s no sleeve on that …” 

 

She says the next words through her teeth. “We’re out of sleeves.”

 

He takes the espresso from her. “Are you okay?” 

 

Her eyes flash up to meet his, combative and fierce. “Yeah.” She clears her throat, softening a bit when she realizes he isn’t trying to goad her. “Yeah.” 

 

He hovers uncertainly for a moment. “Okay.” 

 

It is unsettling, seeing her like this. Like she has stepped out of her skin and he is seeing some raw layer of her, some part of her obscured by that big grin and loud laugh and the antics she’s always getting into. As if she can sense these thoughts, she adjusts her shoulders, standing up a little straighter and offering him a small smile. 

 

“I just don’t, uh …” She ducks her head down and says in this weirdly chipper way, “It’s weird, being here alone.” 

 

There is something so bare and honest about it that anything he can think of to say in return seems lacking. He’s used to her bluntness, of course, but only in terms of it annoying the hell out of him. This, on the other hand, seems to scratch at some place in his heart. 

 

“Anyway, enjoy,” she says awkwardly. “I’m, uh … gonna go organize some stuff in the back.” 

 

“I’ll be back in this afternoon,” he says. He certainly wasn’t intending to come back, but when he sees a little hint the usual gleam in her eyes returning, he weirdly doesn’t regret sacrificing the twenty minutes he usually spends in the hospital gym. 

 

“Yeah?” she asks. She cocks an eyebrow at him. “Just a head’s up, it’s probably gonna be _packed._ A regular rager. I’m so popular it’s actually kind of embarrassing.” 

 

He finds himself grinning back at her, and she laughs in this self-conscious way he wouldn’t have expected from her. When he comes back in the afternoon she already has his drink ready. It only occurs to him long after the two of them spend an hour in silence reading their books together and he leaves that she must have been so lonely that she was watching the window long enough to see him walking from all the way down the block.

 

* * *

 

The next week he runs into a few of his coworkers at the coffee shop. Rey mercifully spares him the usual “Good morning, Doctor Ben!”, but his relief is short-lived, because she is looking oddly smirk-y behind the counter the few times they make eye contact. He raises his eyebrows at her, half in greeting and half in warning, and when she wiggles her eyebrows back goofily he feels something unexpected lurch in his stomach. 

 

Once the others leave and he starts attending to his paperwork, he hears the telltale scrape of the chair across from him announcing Rey’s presence. 

 

“Okay, so who’s the redhead?” she asks. 

 

He frowns at her. “Huh?” 

 

She reaches forward and smacks him on the upper shoulder. It’s a god damn miracle she has a job, if she’s treating paying customers like this. 

 

“The _redhead_ ,” she says, “the one who was just here, in the blue scrubs, making all those eyes at you — ”

 

“Whoa, wait, do you mean Kathryn?” 

 

“Yes!” she exclaims. “Or maybe no! I don’t know, she had the curly hair and the iPhone case with the cat on it?” 

 

His face is too red to even lift his head up from his paperwork. “Rey, would you keep your damn voice down — ”

 

“You’d be so cute together, though,” she says, throwing herself back into the chair. “You’re both tall, you're both doctors, you both drink _coffee_ — ”

 

He slaps his hand down on the table, looking around furiously to make sure nobody has overheard. “Keep.Your voice. _Down_.” 

 

“Fine, fine,” she says dismissively. “But you’ll thank me later.” 

 

His stomach drops. “For what?” 

 

She cackles, getting up from her chair.

 

“For what, Rey?” he calls after her retreating back as she all but skips to the back of the shop. “Thank you for _what?_ ” 

 

* * *

 

He finds out exactly _what_ a few days later, when the stars all align specifically to fuck with him and Kathryn from pediatrics happens to get in line right behind him. He braces himself through his entire interaction with Rey, locking his eyes on hers in a silent warning as she scans his credit card and tells him his drink order will be right up. He’s basically holding his breath when Kathryn follows suit, sure that this will be the moment that Rey inserts herself into their business by roping him into their conversation. 

 

He relaxes when it’s over. He relaxes because he’s a damn idiot. 

 

He should have realized something was up when Rey didn’t have his drink order waiting for him the way she usually did. He should have realized when she aggressively scrawled the name “Ben” on the paper cup instead of handing it to him. He should have realized a lot of things, because he’s a doctor, dammit, which would imply some presence of a brain, but unfortunately all that cognition is powerless to save him now. 

 

He takes a sip and is immediately revolted by the overpowering sweetness. He turns to Rey, confused, and sees she is _giddy,_ her hands wringing together like it’s fucking Christmas. 

 

“Um, miss?” asks Kathryn. “I think I might have gotten the wrong drink …” 

 

The director might as well yell “aaaand, ACTION!” Rey is immediately all simpering smiles and apologies, saying she must have confused her order with Ben's, the nice ER doctor, the guy who’s helping her in biochem, and oh gosh, she’ll fix it right away and she’s _so sorry_ for the mistake –

 

“Oh, no, it’s fine,” says Kathryn, in that cheerful pediatric floor way of hers. She turns to Ben. “Maybe we should just … swap? If it’s alright by you, I only took a tiny sip.” 

 

“Um.” Behind Kathryn’s back Rey is _aggressively_ motioning her arms, either trying to indicate that he should follow Kathryn’s suggestion or summon some sort of rain god. “Yeah, if you don’t mind, sure.” 

 

Kathryn smiles, and there is a softness, a gentleness in her face that he can’t help but notice, despite his mounting irritation with Rey. 

 

“You’re Ben, right? Ben Solo?” 

 

“Yes,” he says. “And you’re Kathryn.” 

 

“Right,” she says with an encouraging nod, “I remember now, we met at the Christmas party we threw on the pediatric floor. You were the one giving all those piggy back rides, right?” 

 

Rey gives him a thumbs up and disappears into the back of the shop. Ben clears his throat and resolves to deal with her later. 

 

“Yeah,” he says, “that was me.” After a beat of uncertainty, he gestures over to the table where he usually sits. “Do you want to … I mean, if you have time, you could join me, if you want.” 

 

Kathryn’s smile is different from Rey’s, full and confident, slow and sweet like molasses. “I would love that.”

 

They sit down together, and Rey doesn't come out from the back for the rest of the afternoon. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SLOW BURN, guys. Imagine a slow cooker than is making something with, like, cheese and potatoes and general stuff most humans enjoy. It's gonna take a few chapters to cook. But it'll be worth it, I SWEAR.


	3. Chapter 3

A few days later he goes out an actual, formal date with Kathryn. They split a bottle of wine, and eat ridiculously fancy food and laugh about how they don’t know how to eat lobster, and when they walk out of the restaurant it’s raining so they run all way back to his apartment, laughing as they get drenched to the skin. She kisses him at his door and calls him a perfect gentleman; he kisses her back and as he puts her in the taxi, he feels a trickle of warmth in his chest that he hasn’t let himself feel in a long, long time.

 

Like most people his age, he has the cliché story of the one who got away. The last woman he dated all but shredded him. He had been graduating medical school at the time, so it was a good four years ago. He hasn’t dated since. The pain of that heartbreak has long since passed, but it is almost impossible on a schedule like his to attempt to court another human being. He was limited to other doctors and maybe vampires, given the hours he worked.

 

Kathryn is, in a word, perfect. Her life is similarly defined by chaos, and he never has to explain his hours or ask for her forgiveness, and neither does she. They settle into a comfortable routine  almost at once. 

 

Rey doesn’t bring it up again, although she does seem particularly smug whenever she sees Kathryn and Ben walk into the coffee shop together. The only thing that grates him is that she is decidedly different whenever Kathryn’s around. On the mornings he walks in alone, she greets him in her usual obnoxious way, finds some reason to mock him, asks him about some random thing she is paranoid will be on her next biochem test. On the days he walks in with Kathryn, she has both their drinks ready before they get through the line, smiles at them, and doesn’t say much of anything at all. 

 

A few weeks into this and nothing all that remarkable happens. He and Kathryn find an easy flow, seeing each other at odd, unpredictable intervals throughout the week. Sometimes she stays the night with him, sometimes he stays the night with her. He visits the coffee shop a little less, only because he ends up going to the one near her.

 

On a Tuesday he is cutting through the patch of grass that connects the hospital parking lot to the Jakku Java when he hears a familiar, muffled voice. 

 

“That’s ridiculous, Finn. I’m a dumb kid to him.” 

 

“Hey, look at me and Poe,” says Finn. “He’s well out of college and the two of us get along just fine — ”

 

“Yeah, well, you and Poe are different.” 

 

“How do you figure?” 

 

Ben tries to duck out of the lot before they notice him by turning around back through his shortcut and taking the long way around on the sidewalk, but a car pulling out of the lot cuts him off. Rey and Finn can’t see him anyway; the hood of a car is popped up, one that he has seen Rey driving before, and her head is halfway inside of it as Finn hovers over her. 

 

“Well, first off, you both work  _ here _ ,” she says. “And second off, you’re like, annoyingly perfect for each other. You’re so sweet it makes my teeth hurt.” 

 

“Okay, yes, we are precious, but you’re changing the subject. If you’d just  _ ask _ him — ”

 

“Ugh, Finn, I don’t think of him that way — ”

 

“We have been best friends  _ way _ too long for you to lie to my — ”

 

“ _ Shit! _ ” 

 

There’s a resounding bang and as Rey jumps back from the car and conks her head on the hood of the car. Ben doesn’t even check for cars as he starts pushing through the parking lot toward them. Rey is cringing, one hand on her head and her thumb in her mouth, and the god damn car is starting to  _ smoke _ . 

 

He is somewhat relieved when she starts to laugh in that usual way of hers, even though it is tinged with surprise. But then her gaze sweeps the parking lot and finds him, and her eyes are wide as saucers, her face blanching like she’s seen a ghost. 

 

“Ben!” she practically squawks. 

 

He scowls at her. Of course she’s upset to see him — she’s done a half-convincing job in the last few weeks of not doing anything blatantly, upsettingly reckless in front of him. He stupidly thought that maybe she’d taken his words to heart, but here she is with a red mark on her forehead and a singe on her hand, proving him wrong. 

 

“What are you — how did — did you …” 

 

Finn is laughing too now, the two of them making eye contact and sounding a little manic about it. Ben scowls. He knows when he’s being made fun of. 

 

“It’s not funny,” he says, reaching to grab her wrist. 

 

She swipes it away from him. “Really, it’s fine.” 

 

“Give me your hand.” 

 

After a reluctant moment, she obeys, pulling her fist out from behind her back. He takes her by the wrist, trying to be gentle even though he is so maddened by them that he can practically feel the impending migraine building at the back of his brain. He carefully pries her fingers open and sees the reddened skin and the slight blister at the top of her palm. 

 

“I have a First Aid Kit in my briefcase, hold on.” 

 

“Doctor  _ and _ a boy scout,” says Rey, raising her eyebrows at him. “But seriously, it’s fine, I’ll just go run some cold water on it — ”

 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says.

 

As he’s pulling the First Aid Kit out, Finn mumbles that he’d better get back into the shop before his break ends. Rey protests for a brief moment, but then Finn is gone, and it’s just the two of them in the parking lot with Rey’s mildly charred, tiny hand cradled in his oversized one. 

 

“It’s not a bad burn, at least,” he says, suddenly self-conscious that someone is going to see them in the parking lot and assume something they shouldn’t. 

 

Her eyes twinkle with that same infuriating amusement. “Yeah, I know,” she says, and by her tone he can tell that she has done much worse. 

 

He sets about fixing up her hand. It’s simple work, something he has done thousands of times, something he doesn’t even need a medical degree and all of the staggering debt that came with it to do. But he is strangely off his game, like he is singing along to a song and the drum beat unexpectedly dropped out. His hands are a little unsteady holding hers in a way they haven’t been since he was an intern. 

 

“So,” she says, her voice a little higher pitched than usual. “How much of … um … when we were talking, how much did you hear?” 

 

His ears flush. “Well,” he says. “Enough.” 

 

“Enough?” 

 

When he looks up her face is a little spooked, her cheeks colored, her nostrils flared. He doesn’t say anything, because he can’t think of anything to say without tripping over himself, without it coming out all wrong. He finishes bandaging up her hand, making sure it’s tight but not too tight, even knowing that it’ll probably be an hour at most before she accidentally does something to shuck it off. 

 

She isn’t looking at him when he finishes, gnawing her lip and staring into the exposed wiring of the car. 

 

“That ought to do it,” he says. 

 

The word comes out in a mumble: “Thanks.” She flexes her hand and looks up at him guardedly. “I, uh — I better get back inside …” 

 

“Yeah,” he says, starting to follow her. She seems a little jerky, a little stiff, and he can tell whatever he overheard is weighing on her. It’s too late to undo his eavesdropping, as weirdly guilty as he feels about it. He isn’t sure if it’s an overstep, isn’t sure if it’ll even help, but there he goes anyway: “Rey?” 

 

She stops and looks back at him. 

 

“Anyone who thinks of you as a ‘dumb kid’ … well. They’re dumb,” he says lamely. 

 

She considers him for a moment, her lips parting in surprise. She recovers faster than he does, ducking her chin down for a moment and coming back up with one of those trademark, incorrigible grins. 

 

“Aw, Ben,” she says, with this wry little laugh. “You don’t have to … I mean, we both know I kind of am.” 

 

Her little half-grin seems to tug at his, and he finds himself smiling back at her. “Only a little,” he says. 

 

She barks out a laugh. “See?” she says, fixing her attention back on the guts of the car. “Case closed.” 

 

Whatever burnt her hand doesn’t appear to be doing anything suspicious under the hood of the car, but Ben lingers there for a moment anyway, even though it is clear she expects him to head into the shop. He watches for a second as her fingers move nimbly through the car’s interior with a practiced kind of ease. She clearly know what she’s doing, but in his experience, Rey knowing what she’s doing is very little assurance that she won’t get herself into shit anyway. 

 

“Rey, maybe you should — ”

 

“Ben!” 

 

It’s Kathryn. Ben’s head snaps up at the sound of her voice, coming through the very shortcut Ben took only a few minutes prior. He forgot he had asked her to meet here. 

 

“Hey, you,” he says, walking over to meet her halfway. She takes his arm and kisses his cheek, smelling like that flowery perfume of hers; he is still not quite used to being with someone nearly as tall as she is, with the ease of the way their bodies match.

 

Kathryn steers him toward the cafe and Ben looks back to give Rey a wave goodbye, but somehow the hood to her car is down and Rey is nowhere in sight.

 

* * *

 

The next morning Rey isn’t at her usual spot behind the counter. A quick sweep of the shop is all it takes to spot her over at the community bulletin board; she is pasting up a flier that says OPEN MIC MORNING, scheduled for the next week. As Ben makes his way over to the counter she turns, chirps her usual “Good morning, Doctor Ben!” and starts working on his drink. 

 

The flier isn’t just on the bulletin board, but also littered all over the counters. Rey holds one up at him and says, “You’re coming, right?” 

 

His first answer is obviously abso-fucking-lutely not, because nothing seems like a fresher torture than hearing someone bleat their feelings on a guitar at 9am on a weekday — but he hesitates and asks just in case, “Are you performing?” 

 

She snorts. “Oh, hell no.” 

 

“Good,” he says, “because this sounds like a nightmare waiting to happen.” 

 

He expects her to laugh, but her voice is oddly somber as she hands him his drink and says, “Oh, come on, Ben, live a little … we both know that death is a flower that never blooms.” 

 

He freezes, his hand mid-stretch to take the coffee from her. “What did you just say?” 

 

She looks him in the eye, and utters the next few words in a deadpan, while gesturing absurdly to the expanse of the café: “This garden is blacker than the blackest night.” 

 

He leans in close, forgetting the coffee entirely. “I will  _ kill _ you.” 

 

Only then does she start to lose her composure, that little smirk twitching on the corner of her mouth despite her best effort. “But Ben,” she says earnestly, “the moon is a heartless maiden, haunting my dreams — ”

 

He grabs the coffee cup from her and says, “You are on thin ice. The ice you are on is  _ extremely thin _ , Rey. I swear to God, I don’t know how you found out, but if you utter another god damn word about that stupid band — ”

 

“You might want to check in with your buddy Doctor Hux about that,” she says, cackling right in his face. 

 

“Oh, for shit’s sake.” 

 

He turns around before his face can get any redder, the sound of her laughter echoing in his ears. It isn’t until he gets to the door that he sees that she’s used a different marker on his cup, and he squints for a moment before he sees the words inked in a shimmery silver: “Kylo Ren.” 

 

Jesus  _ Christ _ , she is the worst. 

 

* * *

 

Kathryn’s place is a few miles from his, closer to the university than the hospital. One Saturday night they miraculously are neither on call, and they spend it getting a little tipsy at her place and watching movies as the snow collects on the world beyond her window. He falls asleep in her bed that night and doesn’t have that strange jilted sensation when he wakes up, already sure of where he is and who he is with before he opens his eyes. It’s calm. It’s quiet. He lays for a long time soaking in the peace of it, waiting for her to wake up, staring at the way the sunlight streams in and reflects the goldish red in her hair. 

 

They decide after breakfast to go on a walk around the neighborhood. It’s early, too early for any of the students to be awake, although he does spot a few chagrinned partygoers trudging across parts of of the snowy campus in what could only be last night’s attire. Occasionally they point one out from a distance and chuckle about it, both reminiscing about their own wild college days. 

 

“Oh my god, is that girl on a  _ run? _ ” says Kathryn, in a mix of bewilderment and respect. 

 

Ben follows her gaze to the figure that is trekking across the lawn, and the shock of exposed skin against white snow. His first thought is that whoever this is, she’s a crazy person — it’s below freezing and the ground is still caked in snow, and she appears to be running in shorts and a t-shirt. His second thought is that of course this crazy person could only be Rey. 

 

She is approaching quickly, and it’s clear that she hasn’t recognized them and is too focused on her path to look up. Ben doesn’t know why, but he makes a split second decision not to say hello to her. In fact, he finds himself lowering his chin against some invisible gust of wind, obscuring his face from her. 

 

“Rey!” says Kathryn, who seems to be quite immune to whatever nonsense is happening to him right now. She bats him on the chest with her glove and points with one hand, waving with the other — ”That’s Rey from the coffee shop,” she tells him, as if he is the one who needs reminding, as if he hasn’t spent every god damn day trying not to develop an ulcer whenever she is in his immediate sightline. 

 

Rey looks over and yanks her ratty headphones out of her very red ears, her eyes lighting up at the sight of them. She speeds up a little bit and Ben cringes as she slips on a frozen patch and rights herself before she falls. 

 

“You okay?” Kathryn calls. 

 

Rey beams at her, all breathless and rosy-cheeked, her hair wisping out of her ponytail. “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she says happily, turning her face to greet Ben as well. Her smile is so uninhibited and wild that the effect of it is almost paralyzing; before he can try to figure out something to say, Rey saves him by adding, “Fancy running into you guys on my turf!” 

 

Kathryn squeezes Ben’s hand and smiles at him. “It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?” 

 

Rey nods vigorously, hopping from foot to foot in a lame attempt to keep herself warm. “Right? The second I woke up I was just like,  _ yeah, _ I gotta go out and — ”

 

“Where are your  _ clothes?”  _ Ben interrupts. 

 

There’s an awkward moment when Kathryn flinches, clearly surprised by his bluntness. Rey, on the other hand, dismisses him with a wave of what looks to be a perilously pale, bloodless hand. “I’ll warm up in a second — ”

 

“Are you sure? I don’t live far from here,” says Kathryn, “if you want to stop in and warm up? ”

 

Rey looks momentarily disarmed by this, her smile wavering. Ben forgets his embarrassment at his outburst, watching the way her eyes soften, watching the gratitude so plain and open on her face. For a fleeting, excruciating second, he thinks it’s because Rey is going to take Kathryn up on the offer — but he should know by now that she is far too bullheaded for that. 

 

“Thank you,” Rey says. “But really, I better get going.” 

 

She salutes them both, and Kathryn waves and says it was nice running into her, and in another second Rey is off, disappearing into another winding path like a pale apparition. When Ben looks away he sees that Kathryn’s eyes are watchful on him. He feels a shadow of something he maybe shouldn’t, something that almost feels like guilt, but he presses his fingers further into the grooves of hers and she is smiling again and the moment has passed. 

 

“She’s a good kid,” says Kathryn, as they continue on their way. 

 

Ben hums in acknowledgement. It is strange to him to think that Kathryn and Rey have a friendship that exists outside of him — until this moment he never really considered it. But of course she seems to be friends with everyone at the hospital, even asses like Hux. 

 

“And awfully pretty, don’t you think?” 

 

Kathryn’s comment is mild, not at all edged or combative, like she is commenting on a flower bush or a shape in the clouds. The answer should be simple, casual, the same way she posed the question — but in trying to be casual, he flounders a few seconds too long, and Kathryn is looking up at him again. 

 

“Sure,” he says, the word coming out a little harsh. “I guess so.” 

 

Satisfied with this, Kathryn smiles and adds, “She could have benefitted from a big sister.” She looks a little wistful. “Teach her how to do her hair. Her makeup.” 

 

“How to dress in weather appropriate clothes,” Ben adds in a grumble. 

 

Kathryn laughs, then says the worst thing he can possibly think of: “Let’s have her over for dinner.”

 

  
God help him, he has no reason say no. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bless your hearts, sorry it's taking so long to update, this week has been the piiiiiiiiits. But onward and upward!


	4. Chapter 4

When Rey turns up in Kathryn’s doorway a week later, she is wearing a faded cotton dress and looking a little less certain of herself than she usually does, holding one of those disposable oven trays. She shifts her weight from foot to foot, looking up at him, looking past him into the house.

 

“I, uh, brought mashed potatoes,” she tells him, her voice oddly stiff, like the two of them are reading lines in a play they’ve never seen before. “There’s, uh — I did a cheese crust on them.”

 

“Oh,” says Ben. “Thanks.” He takes them from her, neglecting to mention that Kathryn is gluten-free. She hovers in the doorway for a second and he clears his throat, adding, “Uh, come in.”

 

He knew the whole thing would feel weird, but not this weird — and he can’t quite pinpoint why. It’s a whole host of little reasons. It is strange to see her outside of the coffee shop, of course, but he’s seen her in public before. But there is something so weirdly formal and forced about this, so very unlike any other interaction they’ve had, that Ben feels his brain starting to grind with the effort to think of something to say.

 

“This is, uh … it’s a great place,” says Rey, staring at the cozy interior of Kathryn’s living room.

 

“Well, thank you,” says Kathryn, stepping out of the kitchen. “How are you, Rey?”

 

“I’m good,” says Rey, relaxing a little bit when Kathryn steps into the room. Ben feels oddly miffed by this. “How are you guys?”

 

“Starved,” says Kathryn, gesturing over to the dining room. “Your timing’s perfect, dinner’s up!”

 

Ben figures out what it is that makes it so weird a few minutes into the meal, when Rey and Kathryn are animatedly chatting about some documentary that came out the year before. It’s that for all the times he has seen her, for all the times she has quietly sat beside him studying in the coffee shop, for all the times his thoughts have strayed to her and her personal brand of recklessness, he’s never actually … had a conversation with her. They’ve never talked to each other about their lives, about their interests, their families. He has compartmentalized her so thoroughly that it has never occurred to him to ask.

 

“You’re quiet over there,” says Kathryn, nudging him with her knee.

 

He recovers quickly. “It’s your fault for cooking such good food,” he says.

 

A few minutes later he’s checking on the cookies Kathryn put in the oven, and by the time he comes back in the conversation has veered away from nature documentaries and biochem and weird stories from the hospital. Kathryn is musing that if it hadn’t been for Rey messing up their drinks, they might not have been dating at all — and Rey’s poker face is so steady that it takes every fiber of Ben’s being not to laugh out loud.

 

“I feel like I ought to return the favor,” says Kathryn. “Unless you’re already dating someone?”

 

“Oh,” says Rey, dragging her fork on her nearly empty plate. “Nah, I don’t really date.”

 

Ben frowns, and says without thinking, “What about that guy you and Finn were talking about the other day?”

 

Her eyes snap onto his for the first time in the entire meal, her face beet red before she even fully looks up. She looks away just as quickly, clearing her throat and reaching for her water glass, and the realization slams into Ben like a brick wall.

 

“That was just a dumb joke Finn made,” says Rey.

 

Ben doesn’t answer. He is paralyzed with his own embarrassment — he has never felt like more of an asshole in his life. As he replays that scene in the parking lot in his mind it all starts to fall together, and suddenly he doesn’t just feel his own embarrassment, but hers as well, watching the excruciating way her shoulders seem to slump and her breath seems to quicken like a trapped animal.

 

The topic is cast aside, Kathryn gracefully smoothing over the edges in her usual way. When she realizes that Rey walked over from her apartment building she insists that Ben drive her home; the two of them trudge miserably through the darkness to his little car, sitting in frigid silence as he revs up the engine and pull out of the driveway.

 

“It really was just a stupid joke,” Rey blurts. “Finn’s a jerk like that sometimes. I don’t even know why he said it.”

 

Ben nods and says the only thing he can think of to say: “Okay.”

 

“I mean, I don’t — I don’t think about you that way, like, _at all_. You don’t have to worry.”

 

He finds himself clenching his jaw and forces himself to relax. “Rey, it’s really not — ”

 

“It is, though,” she says, and see her head turning to look at him in the periphery, his eyes still focused on the road. “It’s just — I don’t — I don’t have a lot of friends, and I really like you, and I really like Kathryn, and I don’t want everything to be weird because of some stupid thing Finn said in the parking lot, because it’s not that way at all, okay?”

 

He is possessed by the sudden urge to pull the car off to the shoulder and say _something_ to her, but he wrestles that urge down before he can figure out what. He is the adult here, he reminds himself. _She_ is the kid. And he knows he told her otherwise, but he has to think of her that way right now, because if he doesn’t he is going to think of something else instead — something like that night on the rooftop, the surreal cold in the air, the press of her lips against his cheek.

 

He takes a breath. “Rey, I totally get it,” he says. “And you don’t have to worry. We’re all still … friends.”

 

He isn’t sure why the word feels so unsatisfactory to him all of a sudden. If someone had asked him a few hours ago whether or not he and Rey were friends, he wouldn’t even be sure what to say; only just now did she define whatever they are. But the more he tries to understand his irritation, the more he thinks that maybe he shouldn’t. Maybe this is just one of those uncomfortable things that they never talk about again, and tomorrow everything will be a little bit awkward but fine, and then —

 

“Um, this is my building right here.”

 

He stops the car a little too abruptly, and she flinches forward in her seat. Before she gets out she looks over at him expectantly. He offers her a tight smile, and she gives him a wavering one back, and he tears his eyes away from her before he opens his stupid mouth and says something to embarrass her again.

 

“Anyway,” she says, “thank you for dinner, I had a great night.”

 

He stays parked in the lot with his engine on until he sees she is safely in the building, and then even after she disappears inside. A minute passes, and then another, and finally he takes a breath and starts the car back up again and drives away.

 

* * *

 

He promised her it wouldn’t be awkward, but it is. He goes to walk into the coffee shop the next day and he sees Rey through the window, laughing at some joke Hux made as she hands him his coffee, and he finds himself walking by and heading to the other coffee shop a block away. The first day he tells himself it’s to avoid Hux; the second day, when Rey is standing at the cash register alone engrossed in a textbook and he turns on his heel before she sees him, he knows it’s more than that.

 

A week passes. One day he is walking to Kathryn’s from the hospital and he passes Rey on another one of her runs, and he knows she sees him, and she knows he sees her, but before he can decide what to do she has already crossed onto the other side of the road.

 

Fine. Let her be a child about this. He doesn’t care.

 

Although he knows, underneath the surface of his annoyance, that he is the one who has handled this all wrong. In trying to spare them both further embarrassment, he has only multiplied it.

 

It snows again on a Thursday, and he happens to be at Kathryn’s place. She set her alarm to get coffee that morning, but when she sleeps right through it he decides to shut it off and go get her the coffee himself. He has, for his own miserable reasons, memorized Rey’s schedule, and is sure that he won’t run into her there.

 

He gets stuck behind a damn bus, because it’s five in the morning and of _course_ he does. It’s pitch black outside and there’s nobody around, and he briefly lets himself fantasize about illegally passing it, roaring through the opposite lane to prevent himself from getting stuck behind it every time it clunks to a stop. When it stops again nearly a block from the coffee shop, he has lost all semblance of patience, already resenting the wiry girl who runs out of the doors for stealing another thirty seconds of his day.

 

Shit. It’s Rey. Running through the snow like a freaking gazelle, wearing nothing but the t-shirt of her uniform, her apron, and jeans. It’s clear that she is late — he can only assume she is covering for someone else’s shift at the last moment, and a glance up the block at the dark shop confirms that it hasn’t even been opened yet.

 

Using this to justify his drive to the coffee shop up the street, he is about to pull away, hoping Rey doesn’t recognize his car — when Rey sharply disappears from view. One second she is running and the next she is practically flying, slipping on ice on the sidewalk, obscured by the pack of icy snow shoved off the side of the road. 

 

Knowing Rey, she will pick herself up in another second and carry on with that same irritatingly invincible strut of hers. He lingers for a moment. Another moment.

 

“Shit.”

 

He doesn’t even bother to pull into the lot, parking it right there on the road. Another few paces, and there she is, laying flat on her back with her eyes wide up at the sky, looking rather stunned. Something seizes in his gut, and in that instant the rest of it falls away — the awkwardness, the embarrassment, the strange, unspoken stirring that passed between them in the car the other night.

 

She flinches when she hears someone coming, and even then she is smiling. “I’m — I’m fine,” she bleats.

 

“No, you’re not.”

 

Her eyes crush shut for a moment as she recognizes his voice. By the time she opens them again, he is kneeling beside her, and she is laughing in that usual careless way of hers. Only this time there is some desperate, panicked tinge to it, bubbling up from some place inside of her that scares him.

 

“Of course,” she says, more to herself than to him. “I’m just, uh — give me a second, and I’ll — ”

 

“No,” he says, “lay still. You have a concussion.”

 

She laughs harder at that, and the sound of it honestly scares him — but in another instant he finds that same calm he summons in the ER, and is thinking outside of himself, outside of her, outside of whatever weirdness they share between them.

 

“Does anything else hurt?” he asks, worried to move her. “Can you move your feet?”

 

“I don’t have a concussion,” she says. But she wriggles her feet and her hands just the same, and he feels some measure of relief. “I just need a second, is all.”

 

Even as she stubbornly insists this, he can see the panic brewing in her eyes. They latch onto him, and in the face of her fear he tries to find his own calm — but it isn’t as easy as it usually is. He cannot dissociate the idea of her being a patient to the idea of her being _Rey_ , who until this moment seemed so unconquerable that even he started to believe it. He isn’t expecting her to be afraid. And she clearly wasn’t, either.

 

He puts a hand on her shoulder, and only then do her eyes start to mist, in some mixture of frustration and embarrassment.

 

“Hey, it’s okay,” he says. “It’s just us out here. You’re fine.”

 

She takes a shuddering, bitter breath, and for a second he thinks she is going to cry — but then that smile is back, watery and uncertain, but there. She is trying to assure him even as he is trying to assure her.

 

“This fucking _sucks_ ,” she says.

 

He surprises himself by laughing, and is gratified to see that she seems slightly more at ease afterward. He takes his hand off her shoulder and says, “Do you want to try getting up again?”

 

She nods. A moment later, she tries to hoist herself up. He doesn’t help at first, trying to assess just how hard she hit herself. He hovers beside her just in case, but after a bit of a struggle she manages to get up to a sitting position, her breath coming fast.

 

“I’ve — I’ve got this, just give me a second,” she says, not looking at him.

 

“I know,” he says — not because it’s true, but because he knows it’s what she needs to hear right now. “But I’m going to help you up anyway, okay? Take my hand.”

 

She hesitates for a moment before she does, and he pretends not to notice. Her eyes are a little dazed, her movements a little less deliberate than usual, seeming like some shadow of the aggressively _Rey_ person she usually is. He braces one hand firmly on the back of her shoulders, using the other to help her to her feet. She wobbles, then steadies herself, looking up at him in a mixture of defiance and apology.

 

“My car is right there,” he says.

 

She looks over at it, some unreadable expression crossing her face. “How did you …” She shakes her head, or at least starts to. He tenses as she tips a bit, making sure she stays on her feet. “I haven’t seen you in ages.”

 

He bites the inside of his cheek. He has no excuse.

 

“We’ll walk slow,” he says, guiding her toward the car. “You’re okay?”

 

“Yeah,” she says distantly.

 

He swallows back his guilt, bracing her just in case as they navigate around the ice and the snow to his car. He eases her into the passenger seat, even as she insists that she doesn’t need help. Once she’s inside she slumps a little bit, holding a hand to the back of her head. He is relieved, at least, that she doesn’t seem to be bleeding.

 

Once he is sure she’s buckled in, he starts the car up and turns it around.

 

“Wait,” she says, with that same listlessness in her eyes. She looks away from the window, and Ben realizes it’s making her nauseous to look out. “Where are we going?”

 

“The hospital,” he says.

 

She blanches at once. “We can’t,” she says. “I — I don’t have insurance, I don’t have …”

 

Whatever it is she doesn’t have, she thinks the better of mentioning it before it slips out.

 

“Let me worry about that,” he says.

 

“Seriously, Ben, I can’t do that to you,” she says, “you should just — just drop me off at home. I’ll be fine.”

 

He feels his brow furrowing. “For someone who wants to be a doctor, Rey, you are suggesting some _seriously_ fucked up things right now. You obviously lost consciousness for at least a few seconds when you hit the ground. You need to get checked out.”

 

“But — ”

 

“Don’t argue,” he says, pulling up to his spot in the lot.

 

He sits in the parking lot for a moment, thinking his options through. If she can act naturally enough, he might be able to sneak her in through one of the side entrances without the entire damn staff knowing about it. Really, the only people that would give him hell for doing this are the attendings or Hux — but then again, everyone here knows Rey. Some part of him is confident that if they get caught, they’ll pretend not to notice every bit as much as he is pretending not to sneak a perilously concussed teenager under their noses.

 

She insists on walking without his help, but he hovers too close anyway, seeing the sweat at her hairline, the hesitation of her step. The entrance they walk through is relatively empty, and mercifully nobody looks up at them as he pulls her into a room and shuts the door, sitting her down on the exam chair.

 

“Hold on,” he says, grabbing his phone to text Kathryn and explain what happened. He’d thought he would be back by now and didn’t even bother to leave a note.

 

“I’m sorry,” Rey blurts, the moment he looks up from the text. There are big, fat tears leaking out of her now, her breath hitching. “I’m really — I’m sorry, I know you’re always saying to be careful, and I annoy the hell out of you, and I know you’re upset with me  — ”

 

“Rey, hold on,” he says, her words cinching in some inconvenient place in him, making him feel something he maybe shouldn’t. “I’m not — I’m not upset with you, Rey. I’m worried. You understand that, right?”

 

She shakes her head, the tears still quietly leaking out of her, and he stands there dumbly, unsure of what to do.

 

“I’m not talking about _this_ ,” she says, her voice muffled. “You — you didn’t come in all week.”

 

He knows under any other circumstances she wouldn’t be this raw with him, this honest. He knows because he has seen other concussion patients get similarly worked up like this, yet another shitty after effect of getting your brain rattled. But knowing this does nothing to lessen the impact of it, nothing to staunch his guilt.

 

“You’re right,” he says. “And I’m sorry.”

 

Her breath hitches again. “I wrecked everything,” she whispers.

 

“No,” says Ben at once. “No, I did. I’m sorry. You’re right. We’re — we’re friends, Rey,” he says, the word still oddly bitter on his tongue. “And I _do_ always tell you to be careful. And you _do_ annoy the hell out of me.”

 

She blinks up at him, all watery-lashed and a little stunned.

 

“But,” he says quickly, before the tears start all over again, “that hasn’t stopped me from caring about you. A lot.”

 

She stares at him with those big, unfocused, _concussed_ eyes of hers, and he can tell that they’re having a moment, so he lets it happen even though he is itching to examine her and make sure she’s alright. He gives her a few seconds to recover, to swipe at the tears on her cheeks. Her next words are so quiet into the sleeve of her shirt that he barely hears them.

 

“You shouldn’t.”

 

His eyebrows lift in surprise — but before he can react, the door behind him opens. They both flinch, but it’s Kathryn, thank god, looking harried and windswept and all at once relieved when she sees them.

 

“Oh, honey,” she says to Rey.

 

And then Rey is crying again, but a different kind of cry — a grateful, lost, chin-quivering kind of cry. And it’s Kathryn who thinks to cross the room, who holds her arms out for her, who strokes her on the back and lets her cry into her shoulder. It’s Kathryn who soothes her, who makes her feel better. It’s Kathryn who knows how to fix her.

  
And it’s Ben who stands uselessly in the corner, wondering if he is the one who broke her in the first place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HASHTAG DRAMA. Thanks as always for readin' and leaving your lovely comments :). They make my work days 800 percent more endurable.


	5. Chapter 5

After everything is calm and Ben is certain there won’t be any lasting damage, a still dazed Rey explains that she was rushing to cover a shift because Finn and Poe unexpectedly had to leave town when Poe’s mother broke her leg slipping on ice about an hour upstate. Ben gathers that means their apartment is empty, which means there won’t be anyone there to monitor her for the next day and make sure nothing changes. 

 

“Is there someone we should call?” Ben asks. “Other friends? Your parents?” 

 

The answer is a bit grim, but her voice is surprisingly light. “No.” 

 

“You don’t want to let your family know that you — ”

 

“Ben, I have a — question about another patient, can I grab you a quick second?” says Kathryn, jabbing her thumb toward the door with a little more urgency than he would think was necessary. 

 

He follows her out, wondering what she could possibly be asking at a time like this that she couldn’t ask in front of Rey. As soon as the door closes behind her, she looks at him warningly and says, “Ben, Rey doesn’t have any family. She was brought up in the foster system and got emancipated at 16.” 

 

The words feel like a physical blow to his chest. “Wait, what?” 

 

Kathryn purses her lips. “I thought you knew.” 

 

It is deeply disconcerting, the way the image of Rey he had in his mind seems to crumble and reshape itself. She was always so happy, so determined, so careless. He assumed it was the product of a happy childhood, of growing up knowing she would be protected and never needing to exercise any caution. He assumed she was treating the world like a safety net because it was all she had ever known. 

 

Now that he puts all of her recklessness into context, he realizes that there had never been a safety net. That Rey didn’t exercise any caution because apparently nobody cared enough to try and teach it. 

 

“No,” he says quietly. “She never told me.” 

 

Rey ends up staying with him for the day while Finn drives back down and Kathryn finishes her shift at the hospital. He doesn’t ask her any more questions, and she doesn’t say much either, blinking slowly and occasionally pressing a hand to her temple. He knows better than to let her watch television or read or fall asleep in the aftermath of the concussion, so the two of them sit on the couch, Rey occasionally breaking the silence to insist that he doesn’t have to stay here and she feels bad for taking up his time. 

 

“I’ve got work to do anyway,” he says, gesturing to the laptop he has propped up on the couch. “Just — think of it like we’re studying in the coffee shop.” 

 

“Except you won’t let me read my textbooks.” 

 

“Except that,” he says with a nod. 

 

She’s restless. He doubts she has ever been told to sit still for this long. After an hour or so she starts to look like a drowsy, caged animal, fiddling with the seams of her shirt, chewing the inside of her cheek, running her fingers through the same strand of hair over and over again. It would usually irritate him, but as long as he sees her moving in the periphery he is at least assured that she isn’t falling asleep on him. 

 

“How come you quit the band?” 

 

At first he suspects that she’s teasing him again, but he sees from the slightly strung out expression on her face that she is not up to the task. 

 

“I don’t know,” he says. “We all just outgrew it, I guess.” 

 

“You and Hux?” she asks. 

 

He nods. 

 

“But do you still sing at all?” 

 

“Not really,” he says. It’s true. Occasionally he’ll hum to the radio or in the shower, but for someone who used to front a band, he is surprisingly offput by his own voice. 

 

Rey considers this for a moment. “That’s a shame,” she says. “You had a nice sound.” 

 

He feels his face growing hot. “Exactly how much of that crap did you  _ listen _ to?” 

 

She smirks for the first time since they got to his apartment, a little bit of that impishness cutting through the cloud in her eyes. “You guys have  _ quite _ the discography on YouTube,” she says slyly. “Hux couldn’t wait to show me.” 

 

Ben isn’t sure why, but the idea of her being friends with Hux is more grating than it should be. “Of course he couldn’t,” he says mildly. 

 

Rey doesn’t press him any further after that. Another lull follows, and he returns back to his paperwork, casting a nervous glance over at her every few minutes as she stares with eerie calm at different spots on his floor and some of her movements still. Sometime in the midafternoon he catches her with her eyes closed, and his chest seizes with immediate panic. 

 

“Rey,” he all but shouts at her, more angry at himself for letting her fall asleep than he is with her. Still, she flinches, looking scared as her eyes fly open — there is a split second where she clearly doesn’t remember where she is, and is looking at him with a primal kind of fear, like she is expecting some kind of blow. 

 

He didn’t realize he had gotten up, but he’s hovering over her now, his hand outstretched to shake her shoulder. It’s this hand she is staring at. He moves it back to his side, shifting his weight uncomfortably between his feet. 

 

“You fell asleep,” he says. 

 

She tears her eyes away from him, wincing. “I’m not supposed to do that,” she says dully. 

 

“No, you’re not.” 

 

She considers this for a moment. “But when can I?” she asks. 

 

He isn’t really sure what to say to that. “When it gets dark,” he says. “The usual time you go to bed.” 

 

She smiles faintly at that. “I usually don’t.” 

 

He blows a breath out through his teeth. He’d forgotten what it was like to be in college.

 

“Stay here,” he says, getting up to grab her a glass of ice water. He hopes it will be enough to keep her awake, but in the short time he has gone he returns to see her eyelids are already starting to droop. He hands her the water and she mumbles a thank you, staring into it without drinking. 

 

Crap. The only thing left to do is actually … talk to her. 

 

He swallows self-consciously and tries to think of something casual to ask that doesn’t tread into murky territory again. “What made you want to become a doctor?” he asks. 

 

“ _ Grey’s Anatomy _ ,” she deadpans. 

 

He raises his brows. “Oh,” he says politely. 

 

“I’m shitting you,” she says. “Nah, it was … I don’t know. I like science. I like helping people. I had this one, uh, this lady who was really nice to me in high school, my neighbor Maz, and she was a doctor. She was really good at it.” 

 

Ben treads carefully around her use of the past tense. “So that’s why you wanted to be a doctor? Because of her?” 

 

She shrugs thoughtfully. “Yeah, I guess so,” she says, staring into her water glass. “What about you?” 

 

“If I’m honest, you have to promise not to hate me,” he says. 

 

She smiles. “I promise.” 

 

He sighs and leans back on the couch. “At first, I only wanted to be a doctor because of the money.” 

 

“No shame in that,” she says idly. “Get money, get paid.” 

 

“Yeah, but it’s a terrible reason to commit to doing something for the rest of your life,” he says. “Lucky for me, I … happened to enjoy it. For all the reasons you mentioned. Unfortunately I hadn’t figured it out by the time I was your age.” 

 

She snorts a little. “By the time you were my age,” she repeats. “You sound like someone’s grandpa.” 

 

“Oh, please,” he says. “A little credit where credit is due. You were in sixth grade when I was graduating college.” 

 

“You sound like you’ve put a lot of thought into this,” says Rey wryly. 

 

He turns his head toward the kitchen, running a hand through his hair as if something in the corner distracted him. “It’s just math,” he mumbles, even though she is unfortunately correct. 

 

She hums in response to him, a knowing, forgiving little sound. “Well, I’m glad I met you now and not then.” 

 

He smiles a little despite himself. “Yeah. Me too.” 

 

The resulting silence is so uncomfortable that he can’t think of a way to fill it fast enough. “Are you hungry?” he asks.

“Not really.” 

 

“You should eat,” he says. He thinks about his fridge, which is basically empty save for a few expired yogurts and frozen dinners. “Do you like pizza?” 

 

She furrows her brows. “I’m still breathing, aren’t I?” 

 

The rest of the evening passes fairly quickly after that. Ben loosens up and tells her a bit more about the epic disaster that was the First Order, and his tantrum about wanting to go solo (“Ben Solo?” Rey jabbed) that ended the whole shebang. She tells him about her classes, about some of the more ridiculous regulars that come into the shop when he’s not around. Between the two of them they polish off an entire pepperoni pizza, and then slowly, gradually, the conversation starts to turn. 

 

He tells her about his first serious girlfriend, the one who broke his heart by cheating on him right before he was about to propose to her; he doesn’t mention it was with Hux, because he doesn’t want to put Rey in a position where she feels like she has to take sides. Rey listens thoughtfully, with some alarming mature insights that make him wish he had known he back when it was happening and he had reacted in all the worst, most self-destructive ways. And when he tells her about that — how he lashed out at his parents, moved away without a word, ended up taking a year off and barely scraping his way through medical school — she doesn’t once interrupt him or seem judgmental. 

 

Only after he finishes the long, exhausting details of the saga does he realize two things: that he has never told Kathryn about any of this, and that he has, quite possibly, never talked this long in his life. 

 

She’s looking a little drowsy again so he gets up and grabs a bag of chocolate chips he’d forgotten about on the top shelf of his pantry, from some hospital bake sale at least a year before. They split the bag between them, popping chocolate chips into their mouths, Rey sitting with her knees tucked into herself. 

 

“Kathryn told me about … how you were in the foster system,” he says cautiously. 

 

Rey nods, chewing on another chip. He was afraid she might take offense to him prying, but he figures that if she was open about it with Kathryn, she will probably be similarly open about it with him. Still, he is careful to let her speak next, not wanting to pressure her. 

 

After a moment she says, “I was really young — my parents were in a car crash. They died, I didn’t.” She shrugs. “I don’t even really remember them.” 

 

He searches her face, but she seems more herself now; her honesty is a product of Rey, not an after effect of the concussion. She talks about it the way she might mention the weather or tell him his shoes are untied. Somehow that doesn’t ease his distress at hearing it. 

 

“That couldn’t have been easy,” he says. 

 

She smiles this little wisp of a smile and says, “Yeah. I, uh, moved around a lot, I guess.” When she looks at him again, though, her eyes are a little brighter. “But that’s how I met Finn,” she says. “He’s my — well, he’s kind of like my everything. My best friend. My family. I don’t know what I would have done without him. I moved in with him when I was 16 and we’ve been together ever since.” 

 

Ben is asking before he can think it through: “You’re —  _ together _ together?” 

 

She cocks her head, confused for a moment — and then giggles sharply. 

 

“Well?” he asks, a little miffed by how easily she still makes fun of him, even in her state. 

 

“You’ve been coming to the coffee shop for … what, at least a year? And you  _ still _ don’t know that Finn and Poe are, like, madly in love with each other?” 

 

He recalls at once the other crucial part of that conversation that he overheard in the parking lot, and at once he realizes his fatal error in asking her this. They both know that he should know Poe and Finn are together. And they both know that there’s only one reason why he would think to ask what he just asked. 

 

Mercifully, Rey doesn’t bring any of it up. Rather than poised to tease him, there is something solemn in her eyes, that weird unspoken energy between them again. 

 

“I, uh,” he starts. “I never properly thanked you. For orchestrating that whole … me and Kathryn thing.” 

 

Rey tightens the hold of her arms around her knees, resting her head on them. “I’m glad it worked out,” she says, without a trace of bitterness in her voice. 

 

“And I’m sorry I gave you a hard time about it,” he relents.  

 

She smirks. “You’re my friend, Ben. I just want you to be happy.” She yawns widely. “And for you to recognize that I am mostly always right in all things, so … suck it.” 

 

He can tell she is only saying it to cut the tension, and he almost wishes she hadn’t. In the tension there was a possibility, a chance that he might say something that made her say something that spiraled into something else — and as soon as he lets his thoughts wander there, he hates himself for it. He shuts it down before he the rest of reality crashes down on him, leveling him with the unresolvable guilt. 

 

It’s dark then, and when she starts to fade out he doesn’t stop her. She’s asleep by the time Finn pulls into the drive, running up to the door all flustered and panting and utterly wrung out. 

 

“What the fuck happened?” he asks. 

 

Ben hushes him, scowling. “She’s asleep.” 

 

“In your  _ apartment? _ ” Finn hisses. He lets himself in without an invitation, pushing past Ben and taking in Rey’s form curled up on the couch, the ice pack she had on her head now abandoned and melting on a cushion. “What …” 

 

“She slipped on ice outside the shop and got a concussion,” says Ben, trying to respect that whatever aggression Finn is coming at him with is ultimately for Rey’s sake, not for the sake of annoying the hell out of him. “I happened to be driving by and saw her go down. I got her checked out at the hospital, and she’s going to be fine, but we kept her here for the day just in — uh.” 

 

Finn hugs him so unexpectedly that Ben’s words fall out of his mouth and quite possibly out of his brain. He stands stiffly, not reacting, but it’s over as soon as it happens. It’s more of a back clap than a hug, maybe, but the sentiment is the same. 

 

“Thank you,” says Finn gruffly. 

 

Ben nods, still a little stunned. “I, uh — I’ll help you get her out to the car.” 

 

It worries Ben a little when he angles an arm under her knees and another under her shoulders and she doesn’t wake up, but then her eyelashes flutter and she murmurs something into his chest and he feels some measure of relief. He hoists her up gently, and for a moment he forgets himself, forgets even that Finn is standing a few feet away, watching them. She’s so small in his arms, her face so peaceful in slumber, that for the first time he finds himself utterly unable to continue denying that Rey has an impossible kind of beauty to her, the kind that he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to fully appreciate.

 

“I’ll get the door open,” says Finn, rousing him back to reality. 

 

“Right. Thanks.” 

 

The night is oddly quiet, and only then does Ben realize how late it must be. He settles Rey into the passenger seat and buckles her in, making sure she’s upright. 

 

“It’s a short drive,” says Finn, sensing Ben’s hesitation. 

 

He stops himself from saying  _ I know _ . 

 

Finn’s about to get into the car himself when he turns and looks back at Ben. 

 

“She really cares about you, you know,” he says, without any malice. “And I know that you — well. What I mean to say is just … be careful with her. A lot of people haven’t been.” 

 

He feels an immediate flash of anger at Finn’s presumption, but he realizes at once that it is misdirected. He is not angry with Finn. He is angry with himself for the last week he spent aggressively avoiding her, doing exactly what Finn is asking him not to do right now. 

 

So Ben takes a breath and nods. “I will.” 

 

There are a lot of things he knows he can’t be to Rey, but from here on out he will not be another person who lets her down. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BLESS this weekend for all the free time it gave me. It might be a bit until the next chapter because I am fulfilling my prompt for the Valentine's Day exchange (stay tuned!), but hopefully it'll be done later in the week. 
> 
> Also, update for anyone who read "Where There's Smoke, There's Fire": I am going to be writing a part two. It will be slow moving because I want to do it justice, but your anons and comments have been heard and I will do my best to deliver :). Thank you guys so much for your lovely words, you make me the happiest of humans in this ship :).


	6. Chapter 6

Everything settles back into its old rhythm soon enough. Rey, predictably, tries to go back to work right away, and gets about half an hour into her shift before Ben notices and rats her out to Poe. After a week he lets her start studying again, and every half an hour he cuts her off and makes her take a fifteen minute break. And then a week passes, and another week, and everything is … normal. Or at least as normal as it ever has been since Rey crashed into his life. 

 

“I’m supposed to  _ strongly encourage  _ you to try our new scones,” Rey tells him one morning. 

 

Poe rolls his eyes from the smoothie machine. “Jesus, kid, you’re about as subtle as a gun.” 

 

“Were the jazz hands too much?” she asks. 

 

“Why am I being strongly encouraged to try your scones?” Ben asks, taking his espresso from her. 

 

Rey shrugs. “Beats me — ”

 

“Because corporate said so,” says Finn, coming in from the back. 

 

“Christ, you two,” says Poe. “Thank god neither of you have any long-term plans to work in sales.” 

 

“I’ll take a scone,” says Ben, surprising himself.  

 

Rey laughs out loud. “Suck it, Poe, I can sell anything.” 

 

“To him, maybe,” Poe mutters.

 

Ben feels the tips of his ears grow hot. “I haven’t had breakfast yet,” he says — but nobody’s listening to him anyway. Rey is grabbing the scone from the display case, looking rather smugly at Finn. 

 

“What did we say Ben was?” she asks. “Five points?” 

 

Ben frowns. “Wait, what?” 

 

Finn points a warning finger at her. “Don’t get cocky. Whoever sells one to Hux gets twenty points and I will set your apron on  _ fire _ before I let you get to him first.” 

 

Poe looks at Ben with a grim expression on his face before he heads into the back office. “They’re incorrigible,” he says. “Everything’s a competition.” 

 

Rey hands him his scone then, beaming in that usual way of hers. He takes it from her. 

 

“I feel so used.” 

 

She pats him on the forearm in mock sympathy, right in the same spot where she knows the tattoo is hiding. “Hope you like blueberry.” 

 

Ben rolls his eyes and takes it from her. For whatever it’s worth, the scone is pretty damn delicious. He finishes it before he even makes it back to the hospital, and is none too surprised to find half the doctors and nurses on his floor sporting familiar Jakku Java bags of scone crumbs throughout the day. And lo and behold, just before Ben leaves for the day, Hux walks in to relieve him, polishing off a chocolate chip scone. 

 

“What the hell are you smiling about?” Hux demands with a scowl. 

 

Ben just shakes his head and walks away. He hopes whatever Rey won in that bet was worth talking to Hux for however long it took to make  _ that _ miracle happen. 

 

* * *

 

A few days later he and Kathryn manage to sneak out of the hospital for a break together, a rare and impressive feat, all things considered. It’s one of those late winter days that starts hinting at spring, a warm undertone to the cold, a hopeful smell in the air. She’s holding his hand and knocking her shoulder on his every now and then as they take a walk around. 

 

They start walking toward the coffee shop at some point without making any conscious decision to, and Rey’s face immediately lights up at the sight of them. She looks like she is bursting with some kind of news, waving at them a little more aggressively than usual, like she’s waving with her entire body. He remembers how a few weeks ago the sight of this used to make him cringe with secondhand embarrassment for her, but now he’s gotten so used to it that he just smiles back. 

 

That is, until Rey opens her mouth and manages to fuck up his entire day with two little words. 

 

“Happy birthday!” 

 

She is gleeful, red-cheeked, oblivious. Even when his smile drops she is grinning up at him, looking utterly pleased with herself. 

 

Kathryn drops his hand. “It’s your birthday?” she asks. 

 

There’s a beat of silence that Ben uses to unclench his jaw. “Technically,” he says. 

 

It’s not like he didn’t remember. He’s just never been big on birthdays. He supposes it’s the same old sad, Hallmark movie cliché — growing up his dad was always making promises he couldn’t keep, and it was painful watching his mom go to the lengths that she did to make it up to him. By the time he got to college his only celebration of it was collecting the package his mother sent to him at the school post office. In his adult years she has acquiesced to his wishes and simply sends a card and calls him, and for good measure, he  _ very specifically _ didn’t put it on Facebook. 

 

“You didn’t tell me,” says Kathryn quietly. 

 

“I don’t celebrate my birthday,” he says. He scowls over at Rey. “So how the hell did you — ”

 

“Shit,” she says. Her eyes are wide and apologetic under the brim of her giant purple Jakku Java baseball cap. “You’re — you’re in the loyalty program, your birthday popped up, shit. Sorry.” 

 

“It’s not a big deal,” he says, wishing he had kept himself a bit more in check. But he didn’t, and now it’s a  _ thing _ , and Kathryn seems put out, and Rey looks like she’s about to ramble herself right off some metaphorical train tracks. “It’s not — I just don’t care, is all. I didn’t mean to not tell you. If my mom hadn’t called me this morning I probably wouldn’t have remembered anyway.” 

 

Kathryn’s shoulders loosen up. He sees her making the conscious decision not to let it go, and he is equal parts guilty and relieved when she turns to him and says, “Are you saying that because you mean it or because you didn’t want me to know you’re an old man now?” 

 

Rey laughs out loud, the sound of it filling up the room, and just like that most of the tension is gone. 

 

“Aw, come on,” she says to Kathryn. “He doesn’t look a day over 55.” 

 

“Don’t push it,” he tells her as she forks over their drinks. There’s something else in her hand, though — a piece of paper. At first he is confused, thinking she is handing him a receipt, which she usually just tosses. Only after a split second does he realize it’s a card. 

 

He nods to her and tucks it into his jacket. Kathryn doesn’t notice the exchange, and he feels weird about it — he hadn’t meant to make it secret, but now it kind of feels that way, like if he takes it out in front of her later she’ll think he held out on her or something. He resolves to open it when he’s at home later that night, but then Kathryn squeezes his hand and looks up at him and just like that his plans are changing. 

 

“We’ll find some way to celebrate later tonight,” she says with a wink, turning toward the exit. 

 

Only Ben sees Rey flinch before she ducks under the counter, suddenly very fixated on the aesthetic of the cookie tray on the bottom shelf. 

 

* * *

 

It isn’t until later that night, when he is kissing Kathryn goodbye at his apartment door, that she stalls for a moment. 

 

“You can tell me things, you know,” she says quietly. “I want to know you.” 

 

He opens his mouth, floundering for a moment. He doesn’t want to dismiss her by telling her the truth — that he wasn’t hiding anything from her at all, and he didn’t think to share in the first place because it genuinely didn’t matter to him. So instead he takes a breath and says, “I feel the same way. And I’m sorry.” 

 

She shakes her head. “Don’t be,” she says, kissing him on the cheek. “Happy birthday, Ben.” 

 

Later that night he is hanging his coat up in the closet when the birthday card from Rey falls out. He is almost too grated by its presence to open it; it is an unwelcome reminder of the encounter this morning, of how the simple things in his life are complicating themselves again. But he finds himself opening it without thinking, that same cautionary part of his brain shutting off the way it always does when it comes to her. 

 

She obviously made the card herself. It takes Ben a moment to figure out what it’s of, and then, with an exasperated breath, he realizes that she has drawn an elaborate version of the First Order logo on the front of the card. The inside reads  _ Every year is just another year closer to death _ , a rather cringe-worthy lyric that made it onto the second track of their first “album,” if one could even dignify it by calling it that. Below it she wrote happy birthday, and below that just her name, scrawled a little carelessly, without any other words preceding it. 

 

He should just throw it away. He isn’t the type to put things on the fridge or keep memory boxes stashed under his bed. There is no place for it here in this tidy apartment, the same way there really isn’t any room for Rey in his tidy life. 

 

Eventually he shoves it in the back of his underwear drawer. He'll think of something to do with it later. 

 

* * *

 

The next day Ben spends an absurd about of time wrestling with what to say to Rey. Does he thank her for the card? Acknowledge it at all? Finn is the one at the register when he grabs his coffee, but he sees Rey flitting around in the back, and sits down in his usual corner still entirely undecided. He pulls out his laptop, his back turned to the counter, half-hoping that Rey will interrupt him and half-hoping she will stay in the back and not even notice he’s there. 

 

Neither of his half-hopes come true, though, when he hears a crash and a yelp that he so innately knows belongs to  _ her _ that he is already out of his chair before he turns around — and sure enough, there she is, the entirety of her Jakku Java shirt stained with coffee so hot that it’s practically steaming right off of her. A customer is apologizing profusely at her, and before Ben’s brain can so much as logically work out what the hell is happening, Rey is ripping off her shirt and standing in the middle of the god damn coffee shop wearing nothing but a sports bra. 

 

Poe snaps into action with impressive speed, yanking off his apron to cover her and ushering her into the back as she  _ laughs _ , because it’s Rey, and what else would she do except  _ laugh _ . As fast as Poe is, though, the image is already seared into Ben’s brain — her lean body, the gentle curve of her waist, the sharpness of her collarbones, her slight breasts inside her bra. 

 

He is jarred out of his reverie by the realization that she probably just got the shit burnt out of herself, and he follows Poe into the back, entirely forgetting himself as he wrenches the office door open. 

 

Rey looks up at him, her eyes wry, clearly assuming that it’s Finn opening the door. The moment she sees him standing there she balks so dramatically that under any other condition he might have laughed. 

 

“You can’t — you shouldn’t be back here,” she says, throwing her arms indiscriminately over herself with Poe’s apron. 

 

“I thought you were going to be more  _ careful _ ,” he snaps back. 

 

She scowls. “A customer tripped on  _ me! _ You saw what happened, Poe, you tell him — ”

 

“Are you okay?” Poe asks instead, handing her a shirt he has produced from out of the drawer. 

 

“Yes,” says Rey as she accepts it, eyeing Ben warily. He can tell she is waiting for him to turn around to pull the apron from her body and put the shirt on, but as overtly awkward as this situation is, he doesn’t trust her enough to take her word for it. And she’s not exactly making the whole unspoken  _ Could I look very carefully at your bra-clad chest? _ question any easier to address, either. 

 

In the end Poe is the one who tells her to turn around so he can take a look at the damage, and somehow manages to make the situation ten times more unbearable when Rey turns around and exposes the bare small of her back. Ben jerks his eyes to the floor, but not before Poe notices him staring. 

 

“It really looks fine,” says Poe, more for Ben’s benefit than Rey’s. 

 

Rey yanks the shirt over her head, for once devoid of any quippy reply, and Ben sees that her cheeks are almost as red as her skin was where the coffee spilled on her. In the few beats that follow all Ben can manage is to meet Poe’s eye with what he imagines is the most world-weary expression he has ever made in his life. 

 

“Oh, please,” says Poe, with an exasperated smile. “You’re not the one who has to  _ live _ with them.” 

 

When Ben emerges, he almost bumps right back into Rey, whose back is turned to him as she talks a mile a minute. 

 

“Really, it’s no bother at all, it’s just a dumb shirt — ”

 

“I feel like such an  _ ass _ though, I mean I was looking at my phone, who the hell  _ does _ that, and I just walked straight — ”

 

“No, no, we all do that, I ran into a telephone pole the other day texting Finn, seriously, just ask him — ”

 

“She did,” Finn calls from the back. 

 

“Still,” says the customer, and only then does Ben recognize him — an intern from the hospital, fresh out of med school, whose name he has either forgotten or never bothered to learn. He’s got that all-American look, tall and broad-shouldered, the type of guy who got mentioned in the yearbook sixteen times even though the debate club only got one line. 

 

“Let me make it up to you, at least,” he says, as the temperature of Ben’s blood seems to simmer. “I’ll — I’ll take you out for lunch, do you like lunch?” 

 

Rey shakes her head. “No, no, you don’t have to — I mean, I like lunch, who doesn’t like lunch, but really, it’s fine, you don’t have to — ”

 

“She would  _ love _ to get lunch with you,” says Finn, very loudly from the register, despite the fact that he is in the middle of a transaction with a customer. 

 

Both Rey and Ben turn around to glare at him, and only then does Rey see Ben standing there. Her eyebrows lift for a moment, almost imperceptibly, and he realizes that she is reacting to him — to his hard expression, to the tension in his jaw, to his shadow looming over her. He can see the shift in her eyes so clearly that she might have spoken the words out loud. She was going to say yes to the intern, and now that she has seen Ben, she is going to say no. 

 

And so Ben does something incredibly stupid. He nods at her. Just once.

 

The breath she was holding seems to leak out of her, deflating in her chest. When she turns away, back to the intern, her voice is different — lower. Calmer. Resigned. 

 

“Well,” she says. 

 

It’s the only opening the intern needs. “How about tomorrow?” he asks. “Does that work for you?” 

 

“Yeah,” she says, “what time do you …” 

 

“Let’s say noon?” he asks. He is so ready with answers, so confident, so self-assured. The very model of a surgical intern. “I can meet you here.” 

 

Rey’s arm reaches up to rub the back of her neck with an uncharacteristic shyness. “Sounds good to me.” 

 

“I’m David, by the way,” he says, holding his hand out. 

 

Rey extends her own and takes his with a crooked little half-smile. “I’m Rey.” 

 

* * *

 

“You seem distracted,” says Kathryn later that night, as they watch a movie on the couch. 

 

He blinks over at her. “How so?” 

 

“Well, the main character’s head got cut off and you didn’t even flinch.” 

 

“Wait, really?” 

 

She smirks. “No, not really.” 

 

He breathes out a laugh. “Okay, you got me,” he says, turning his attention back to the screen. 

 

“The thing is,” Kathryn starts, and there is a tone in her voice, a trepidation so apparent that no amount of distraction could make him miss it. He turns to her and sees that her eyes are a little wider than usual, trained on his. She clears her throat and tries again: “The thing is, I’ve been offered a fellowship. I applied for it a few months ago, and well …” 

 

“Congratulations,” he says at once, grinning as an almost painful kind of relief floods through him. “Wow, Kathryn, that’s — ”

 

“It’s in San Francisco,” she says quickly. 

 

“Oh.”

 

She is very still. “And it’s for six months.” 

 

He vaguely remembers him telling her that she grew up there, and how hard it was to visit her parents when it was a very expensive six hour flight away. Now that the prospect of it sinks in differently, and he finds himself unmoving, afraid to say anything she won’t agree with. 

 

“I, uh … I know this is all so new and everything, and Ben, I really, really — ”

 

His gut clenches, certain she is going to say it. 

 

“I care about you. A lot,” she says instead. 

 

He nods, and his hand finds hers. She laces her fingers through his and stares down at them on the couch. 

 

“Could we … ” She swallows, looking back up at him anxiously. “Could we put this on pause? I don’t want to — it’s really up to you, I’m the one who’s leaving, and I know they say long distance never works, and I know we only just started dating a few weeks ago, but  — god, I’m sorry, I’m rambling. Just — tell me what you’re thinking.” 

 

He recognizes what she is offering here. Truly, there is no “pause” — either he’s in or he’s out, and the word “pause” is just a buffer, making it seem like less of a commitment, less of a milestone to tell her that he can look six months into the future and know that he still wants to be with her, even if she’s not around. 

 

As he considers her, perched in her sweatpants on his couch, he knows that the answer should be easy. There is nothing ambiguous about this. They have been direct with each other from the start. He can’t pretend that it’s too soon to decide, because he knows that he won’t feel any differently about her in a few weeks, in a few months, in a few years, than he does right now. 

 

And maybe that is the thing that unsettles him the most. 

 

He understands that this is his out. That right here, right now, is the final exit on a freeway, the last one he can take without making a mess of things, without compromising himself. And he wonders why he is thinking of that exit even when he doesn’t have one legitimate reason to take it. 

 

So he kisses her. So he tells her that he’ll wait for her here. And her eyes start to water with relief and it becomes very apparent just how much it means to her, just how much it would have meant if he’d refused, he sits there holding her on the couch with his leaden heart wondering what the  _ hell _ is wrong with him if this woman he does not deserve still doesn’t feel like enough. 

 


	7. Chapter 7

Kathryn doesn’t have to leave for another week, so they resolve to spend as much time together as they can, even though the idea of it leaves Ben feeling oddly anxious. It feels like every moment with her is heavier, the weight of their new dynamic struggling to settle on his back. In a flash the relationship is more meaningful than he ever meant it to be; in a flash he is wrenched out of the comfort of the present, and into a future where Kathryn is suddenly present in all of his plans. 

 

The next day she asks him to meet at Jakku Java, one of many moments they plan on stealing in the next few days before she goes. Only when Ben shows up, Kathryn isn’t there. Finn is at the register. Something is off. 

 

_ Be there in a sec! _ Kathryn texts him. 

 

Ben settles into his usual seat without getting anything to drink, and halfheartedly scrolls through the news app on his phone while he waits. Eventually he hears Kathryn’s voice talking animatedly, but when he follows the sound, he realizes she isn’t coming out of the front of the store, but the back — and a sheepish Rey is trailing behind. 

 

“Just look at her, isn’t she darling?” Kathryn asks Finn, taking Rey by the shoulders and pushing her forward as if she is something on display. 

 

Ben narrows his eyes over at them. There is something different about Rey — more than something, in fact. She isn’t wearing her Jakku Java uniform, or her jeans, or even that plain cotton dress she wore to Kathryn’s for dinner. In fact, if he isn’t mistaken, he has seen the same pale blue knit sweater and heeled boots before … except the other times, he’s seen them on  _ Kathryn _ . 

 

Okay, so this is a little fucked up. He isn’t sure why, and he isn’t sure how, but it is entirely disconcerting to him in a way that it shouldn’t be, like Kathryn has shed off some second skin and put Rey in it. They’re so separate in his mind, so compartmentalized, and this is disrupting the fragile order of things. 

 

It isn’t just Rey’s clothes, though. Her eyes look a little wider. Her lips are a little pinker. Her hair is out of its usual bun and baseball cap and hanging in loose curls around her shoulders. It’s all very subtle, the hair and makeup, but the subtlety does nothing to lessen its effect; she is radiant, even as her shoulders curl in self-consciously, even as she mutters a few protests under her breath. 

 

“Someone’s all ready for her date,” says Finn, grinning at her. 

 

Rey grins back despite herself, blushing furiously. “It’s not a  _ date _ ,” she says to the floor. 

 

Kathryn is looking very satisfied indeed, grabbing one of those big, decorative scarves of hers to top off the whole ensemble. Ben looks away, but not before Rey’s eyes graze his, and Kathryn’s follow. 

 

“Ben!” Kathryn exclaims, grabbing Rey by the hand and pulling her along. “Sorry, we were having some girl time. What do you think?” 

 

He knows he has to look at Rey now that Kathryn is gesturing so proudly toward her, but even so, it feels like his eyes are moving against sandpaper. He doesn’t want to see her. He doesn’t want to see the way her cheeks are flushed in anticipation, the way she gnaws at the corner of her lip, the skittish way she looks at him, half defiant and half hopeful. 

 

“I don’t notice anything different,” he says. 

 

Rey’s expression freezes on her face, as if she has suddenly gone from three dimensions to two. Ben regrets it immediately. In his haste to assure himself that he didn’t care, he didn’t stop to consider that she might. 

 

Kathryn frowns to herself, but recovers quickly, changing the subject. “Where did he say he was taking you?” 

 

Rey is practically talking out of the corner of her mouth to avoid Ben’s scrutiny. “The, uh — the sandwich place up the street,” she says, with obvious reluctance. 

 

“Oooh,” says Kathryn. “Their caprese sandwich is to  _ die _ for, trust me. Text me afterward and let me know how it goes!”

 

She gives Rey a hug, giving Ben an out to finally look away from them. Rey books it to the back as Finn lets out a low whistle and Poe shushes him loyally. 

 

Then Ben looks up to face Kathryn, who has taken the seat across from him and propped her elbows on the table. There’s a thoughtful expression on her face, and it makes him feel all the more awful about raining on their parade — can’t she just be mad at him? Can’t she just call him out for being a dick? God knows he deserves it about now. 

 

“What’s on your mind?” she asks instead, putting her hand on his. 

 

Ben lets out a breath. She thinks this is about their conversation last night. And … maybe it is. It’s a lot to take in all at once, a lot of adjustment to make, and he  _ is _ going to miss Kathryn. A lot. It doesn’t justify taking it out on Rey, of course, but it’s a better explanation than any he could come up with himself. 

 

“Nothing,” he says, squeezing her hand back. “I’m going to miss you.” 

 

She offers him a sad little half-smile. “Me too.” 

 

* * *

 

 

He isn’t sure whether or not he should apologize to Rey the next day, or at the very least put on some apologetic air. In his experience, women have taken none too kindly to snide remarks like the one he made yesterday. He is both surprised and perhaps even a little disappointed that she doesn’t seem to have any memory of the remark, beaming in her usual way when he walks in, his espresso already propped on the counter. 

 

“Morning, Doctor Ben!” she chirps. 

 

His smile feels a little coarse against his teeth.  _ How was the date? _ he wants to ask. It pops up like some lurking shadow in his thoughts, and he has to clench his jaw to prevent himself from actually saying it out loud. In her usual perkiness she is maddeningly hard to read. 

 

“Do you still need help before your biochem test tomorrow?” he asks instead. 

 

She shakes her head abruptly. “Nope.” 

 

That’s it, then. That’s the answer he needed. Twenty-four hours and that’s all it took to get replaced by  _ David _ the surgical intern, who probably showed up for all of his exams hungover and still aced them, who probably was still well-liked by his class even though he frequently wrecked the grading curve. 

 

But then she is pulling something out of the register and handing it to him. A list of some sort. His eyes skim the page, take in her loopy, careless handwriting.  _ Wednesday: Butterfly exhibit,  _ one of the lines read. Another —  _ Saturday: Farmer’s Market.  _ It looks like an itinerary for the week. 

 

“Oh,” he says. “You’re busy, then?” 

 

“No,” she says, wrinkling her nose and smiling. “ _ You’re _ busy. Kathryn’s only got a week left before she leaves for six months, you’ve got to take her to all the best spots in town.” 

 

He looks back at the list, and then back at her. “You made me a schedule. To go out with my girlfriend.” 

 

Another trademark grin. “Yep.” 

 

He almost hands it back to her, and then catches himself. “Thanks,” he says. 

 

And then, unexpectedly, her hand is on his wrist. His heart feels like it’s being suctioned. 

 

“That six months will be over before you know it,” she says, her eyes still bright, but with an unexpected solemnity in them. 

 

He isn’t sure why he doesn’t just draw his hand away, and then the understanding dawns on him. This isn’t just Rey doing a favor for him and Kathryn. This isn’t just Rey consoling Ben over the months that Kathryn will be gone. This right here is Rey, firmly and kindly showing him that she is over him, that he doesn’t have to worry anymore. 

 

The list feels like a final nail in a coffin that should be long buried under the ground.

 

“Right,” he says awkwardly. He folds the list crisply, then sticks it into the back pocket of his briefcase. “Well, uh — you should still study. For that test.” 

 

He leaves the words open-ended on purpose, waiting for the inevitable crush of her answer —  _ Don’t worry, I’m going to David’s _ , or something equally irritating. Instead she smiles up at him in a rehearsed sort of way and says, “I will.” 

 

Only after he goes does he realize that she was wearing the makeup Kathryn did on her again, with her hair styled in those same pretty curls. 

 

* * *

 

 

Kathryn leaves. A month passes, faster than it has any right to. Ben still sees Rey every other day, smiling resolutely at him from behind the register. She still studies with him every week. But with Kathryn gone, it feels like every conversation they have is stagnant — as if Kathryn is nowhere and everywhere at the same time, the thought of her more present than it ever was when she was  _ here _ than now when she is thousands of miles away. He can sense Kathryn in the hesitance in Rey’s eyes before she teases him, in the jerk of his hand the time it grazes hers to grab a pencil, in the careful tiptoe of their every interaction. 

 

And then, another month later, it stops feeling awkward. It stops feeling forced. They’re genuinely — well, for lack of a better word, friends. The conversations feel less weighted. There is nothing passive aggressive in the way they catch each other staring. He even starts hanging out with her friends, joining her on jaunts to the movies with Finn and Poe, making plans for some big camping trip they’re going to go on in the summer. 

 

It’s not just Rey now, but Rey and Finn and Poe and Ben, and he kind of likes it that way. He hasn’t had a lot of friends before. Not since the First Order imploded on his ass, that is. It’s nice to have people to talk to outside of work. Poe, it turns out, teaches engineering classes at as an adjunct professor at Rey’s school, and the two of them nerd out over 17th century architecture. Finn is every bit as into dumb apocalyptic video games as Ben pretends not to be. And Rey is always there in the periphery, just happy to be with them all, teasing and nudging and grinning the way she always does. 

 

In May, Rey takes her final for biocem, and Ben decides to surprise her by waiting outside of it. He knows it’s her last final of the year, and thinks maybe they’ll go grab lunch with Finn, who is getting out of a final across campus at around the same time. He wonders if it’s creepy to be lingering here among all the undergraduates, but nobody pays him any mind. 

 

Sure enough, the students start trickling out, Rey one of the first among them. He raises his hand to wave at her, and her face lights up — in an entirely different direction. Ben assumes that it’s Finn, and follows her gaze to find … David. 

 

In another instant Rey is squealing, her eyes bright, her legs pumping underneath her so quickly that she looks like a god damn gazelle. She quite literally  _ leaps _ into David’s arms, and David catches her with the ease of someone who has been affectionately assaulted by Rey a thousand times over, lifting her off the ground and spinning her in the air. 

 

“How did you do?” he hears David asking. 

 

Ben’s stomach is churning in some ancient, awful way. 

 

Rey’s grin is every bit as infectious and blinding as ever. “I aced it,” she says, her voice quiet but charged. 

 

“That’s my girl,” says David, and then — and then he’s kissing her. Rey is still in his arms, still hovering off the ground, and then her legs are wrapping around his torso and he’s actually  _ kissing _ her like that, like they’re in some god damn Nicholas Sparks movie instead of an overrun college campus full of sleepless undergraduates in broad fucking daylight. 

 

Ben turns around abruptly and walks away, feeling his heart thrumming in his fingers, his chest, the space between his ears. It feels like his blood is rushing in tidal waves, dizzying and incapacitating. He is not even aware of how far he has walked until he is standing dumbly in front of his own apartment door, some two miles away from the happy little scene outside of the biology building, away from Rey and her big stupid grin and Dave and his big stupid arms around her waist. 

 

His phone starts buzzing in his pocket. He wrenches it out, half-expecting it to be Rey, half-expecting her to say that she spotted him on the campus, and why the hell didn’t he say hello. 

 

But it’s Kathryn. Ben closes his eyes and presses the phone to his forehead, hating himself more than he ever has. It rings and rings and rings, but he doesn’t answer. He can’t. 

 

He waits for it to ring out, waits for Kathryn to leave a voicemail, and then he dials a number that he hasn’t called in months. 

 

“Ben,” says his mother. She always has this warm tone to her voice, as if Ben didn’t spend years as the colossal family disappointment, as if he didn’t give her years of grief as a teenager and well into his twenties. “How are you?” 

 

He doesn’t know what makes him say it. He hasn’t even let himself think it before. But then there it is, the sharpest kind of reality, cutting through him so savagely that there is nothing he can do but let it bleed out of him: “I’m in love with a 19-year-old girl.” 

 

At first her silence on the other end of the line seems damning. He hates himself. He sinks into his couch, running a hand through his hair, crushing his eyes with his sweaty palm. He hasn’t even told his mother about Kathryn, for fuck’s sake, and here he is spilling like a maniac about the barista from the local coffee shop who beats down fires with her apron and gets in breath-holding contests and drags strangers up on the roofs of clubs on New Year’s Eve. 

 

“Ben?” his mother asks, as if she has misheard him. 

 

He blows out a terse breath in response. It’s as if he has fallen off some sort of cliff and managed to dig himself a hole even deeper down; there was no reason for this, no reason to humiliate himself any further by involving his  _ mother _ in it, when he has done everything humanly possible to distance himself from his family since he was a kid. 

 

And besides, it isn’t even true. He has no  _ fucking _ idea what made him say that just now. Rey is just Rey. She’s just — she’s just Rey, the girl who brings him his coffee. The girl who studies biochem and makes fun of him. The girl with the ghosts in her eyes and the light in her smile. The girl who is maddeningly heedless, the girl who is beyond caution and fear, the girl who is insanely out of his reach. 

 

“Ben,” says his mother, her tone softening. “Who is she?” 

 

There is no possible way to describe Rey and do her justice, so he doesn’t try. “I’m sorry,” he says instead. “I — I didn’t mean that. I shouldn’t have … how are you?” he tries instead, because he really does love his mother, and he should call her more often, and not just because he’s 30 years old and spiraling into an existential crisis of his own design. 

 

Another few beats of silence. Jesus.  _ Shit _ . He doesn’t know what’s come or him, but he is  _ shaking _ , his head replaying the scene outside of the biology building over and over and over again — it doesn’t matter whether or not he loves her. It doesn’t  _ matter _ . He’s with Kathryn. And even if he weren’t, it’s too late. Rey has somebody else, somebody who clearly loves her back, somebody who spins her around and kisses her and makes her face light up like a god damn Christmas tree. 

 

“Listen,” says his mother, in that same voice she used to tell him that there aren’t monsters in his closet, that his father would be home soon, that she loves him. “For whatever it’s worth — your father and I had a pretty big age gap, too. And we made it work.” 

 

The words feel bitter and metallic on his tongue, like he is tasting blood.  _ Made it work? _ He watched years and years of his parents at each other’s throats. His entire childhood was a symphony of slamming doors and screeching tires and apologies. If this is the best she has to offer him, then she has given him nothing more than a death sentence. 

 

“Thanks, Mom,” he says, the words hollow on his lips. “But I’ve — I just got paged. I’ve got to go. Talk soon.” 

  
He hangs up before she can say anything else, his heart still pounding like a battering ram in his ears. He thought it was over. He thought he had conquered himself. Only now does he understand that he was wrong. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SORRY SORRY SORRY it's been so freaking long. Work's been a MESSSSSSSSS and I had to work over the weekend as well. I do not deserve y'all. Please forgive me and my late human ways.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: Verbal abuse, implied domestic abuse.

Ben goes to sleep early that night, and wakes up in the sticky sweat of unwelcome dreams that weave their way in and out of his consciousness. There is a message from his mother that she left early in the evening — he listens to it when he is still half-awake, and then after he gets himself up and makes a cup of coffee around two in the morning, he listens to it again.

 

“Don’t do anything rash,” says his mother. “Call me back. I love you.”

 

Great. She sounds like she is two inches away from having him committed. He takes another sip of his coffee, the bitterness of it doing nothing to wash away the unease he has felt in his own bones since earlier in the day. He is angry, uncomfortable, irrationally jealous. There is too much of him to be contained. He knows there is no chance in hell that he will be going to the coffee shop tomorrow, at this rate. He’s worked up enough right now that he doubts he’ll be able to act naturally in front of Rey for at least a week.

 

At that thought, he sets the coffee cup down.

 

A week. Even that is optimistic of him. He has managed to hold her off for so long now that he assumed it was finished, but if Rey is the force of nature, then his floodgates have splintered and destroyed themselves. There is no going back to the way it was before, the way that they tried to the last time; he can’t sit next to her in some library, or drive with her to some hot dog stand across town, or even merely exist in the same space as her without the thought pulsing in his head, fresh and demanding and impure.

 

His love for her is selfish. He understands that above everything else. He did not choose her when he could have her. He shut her down in the few moments she expressed any interest. And it has taken seeing her happy with somebody else for him to even allow himself to confess his feelings in the privacy of his own mind.

 

Rey is not the reckless one. He is.

 

He doesn’t go back to sleep that night, the untouched voicemail from Kathryn heavy on his phone, his mother’s words still humming in his ears. _Don’t do anything rash_. Well. It’s too god damn late for that, and it has been since the day he met her.

 

* * *

 

Before he sees Rey again he understands, or at least tries to rationalize, where the brunt of his anger is coming from — for all of their friendship in the last few months, Rey has not mentioned David once. There is an embarrassing deliberateness to this, because neither has Finn or Poe. The three of them consciously decided to keep this from him, for whatever uncomfortable reason, and now he feels like a complete and total fool.

 

Is it that obvious, then, that he has feelings for her? Or was Rey keeping it a secret for her own reasons? Why the hell did it have to be a secret in the first place?

 

And then another thought occurs to him — one that he has, if he is being honest, already thought about a few times in the months Kathryn has been gone. They never talk about her. It’s almost as if Kathryn was a ghost, and remains one, haunting their conversations but never actually existing in them. Sure, he talks to Kathryn on his own almost every night, and he knows that Rey has been exchanging emails and the occasional ironic postcard with her. But when Ben and Rey hang out, Kathryn might as well be a figment of their collective imaginations.

 

It only makes sense, then, that Rey wouldn’t talk about David, either.

 

He is perversely comforted by this logic. It makes it feel less personal, like less of an affront. He decides that he can get over it, decides that he _will_ get over it, and go about his business in the usual way.

 

He’s working the night shift that night, covering for Phas, who’s off with her girlfriend in Europe and probably about to Instagram the living daylights out of it to make Ben even more miserable than he already is. It’s a nice night, balmy with a light breeze, seeming to encourage him to get the hell over himself and rip this band-aid off by seeing Rey now, before he makes it weird again. He isn’t sure if she’ll be there tonight, the way her finals have been shaking out, but sure enough she is at the register, bleary-eyed but cheerful as ever.

 

“Phas just landed in Barcelona,” she informs him.

 

He grunts. “Good for Phas.”

 

Rey yawns widely. He stares down at the counter, willing himself not to notice the curve of her back, the way she lifts her chest out as she stretches and curls like a cat.

 

Or maybe he should stare. What does he normally do? The last few months of conditioning himself to her seem like they’ve been stripped in the instant it took for Rey’s lips to hit David’s on the lawn yesterday.

 

“I think she’s going to hit Rome next — ”

 

“Rey, go to the back office.”

 

It’s Finn, bursting into the coffee shop, the expression on his face more fierce than Ben would ever have thought him capable of. Rey hasn’t seen it, turning around lazily, and Finn walks over and whips her around by the shoulders without so much as looking up to see who’s at the register.

 

“Whoa,” says Rey, scowling at once. “What could Poe possibly — ”

 

“ _Go_ ,” says Finn firmly, pushing her out of the way. “Now.”

 

“Oh — okay,” says Rey, a little shaken.

 

“And close the door,” Finn adds, a thin sheen of sweat on his hairline.

 

She obeys without looking back and Ben stands there, too stunned by the scene to react. It is paranoid and perhaps a little self-centered of him, but his first thought is that _Finn knows_. Finn somehow telepathically found out what Ben confessed to his mother, or maybe he was standing there in the courtyard when Ben spotted David, or maybe Ben was just so fucking obvious in the five seconds he was standing here that Finn knew from behind the god damn window.

 

And then the front door to the coffee shop jingles again, and Finn looks up with his eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared.

 

Ben follows Finn’s gaze to a man with the most exaggerated beer gut Ben has ever seen, with a mean scowl on his face. His skin is weatherbeaten, his clothes ill-fitting and riddled with ancient stains. Ben might have mistaken him for a homeless person if he didn’t carry himself with such ridiculous, overblown confidence.

 

It might be the first time Ben has ever hated someone upon laying eyes on them. And that’s saying something, because he was roommates with Hux in college.

 

Ben gets out of his way so he can order, but apparently not fast enough. The man gives Ben an appraising, defensive sneer, despite the fact that Ben is nearly a foot taller than he is. But before the irritation can even register, the man turns his attention back to Finn, a scowl curling onto his features.

 

“What can I get you?” asks Finn coolly.

 

“Don’t bullshit me,” says the man. “I know who you are. The two of you were always running around, sneaking out, doing god knows what else.”

 

Finn doesn’t answer him, his eyes hard and unrelenting. Something dangerous shifts in the room, the air suddenly stifling between them, the hairs on the back of Ben’s neck pricking with alarm. He knows he should do something, but he is so far removed from whatever is going on here that he has no idea _what_.

 

“Tell me where she is,” the man says.

 

Ben reaches for his phone in his jacket pocket.

 

“You have no business looking for her in the first place, Plutt,” says Finn through his teeth, “and besides, she isn’t here.”

 

The man steps as close as he can to the register, his face seeming to purple with menace. “You think you can lie to _me?_ I know her,” he says, “you think I don’t, but I do. She followed you everywhere. I know she’s here. I _know_ it.”

 

“If you don’t leave, I’m going to call the police,” says Finn.

 

“I’m a fucking _customer_ ,” says the man. “I have a right.”

 

“Then order something,” says Finn, “and leave Rey the hell alone.”

 

“So she is here?” says the man, his lip curling. “Hiding, no doubt, the same way she always did. Where is she?” He drags his tongue along his teeth, some dark amusement in his eyes. “You might as well tell me. I’ll see her eventually. Let me guess — the two of you found some hovel, and you knocked her up like the _whore_ she is, and — ”

 

Ben’s fist is swinging before he makes the conscious decision to react, but just as quickly as it goes up he feels another hand wrapping around his arm, stopping his momentum. He wrenches his shoulder away and sees Poe, who releases him with a grim expression.  

 

“Sir, I’m the manager here,” says Poe as he steps past Ben, so firmly and calmly that Ben is instantly ashamed by his impulse. “I’m going to give you ten seconds to clear the premises, or I’m going to call the police. The station is right around the block. And forgive me for assuming, but you strike me as the kind of man who might not want to be brought in for questioning.”

 

The man takes a sharp, menacing step toward Poe, the clap of his footfall echoing through the empty shop. Poe doesn’t so much as flinch, even though the man is close enough that Poe must be able to feel his breath on his face.

 

Eventually the man takes a step back, the ugly smirk settling back on his face. “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “This town isn’t big enough to hide her for long.”

 

Ben feels for a moment as if he is standing outside of his own body, he is so white with fury, watching the man’s retreating back.

 

“Who the _fuck_ is that?” asks Ben, before the door even fully closes.

 

Poe looks every bit as blindsided as Ben, and both of their eyes fall on Finn, who is shaking his head as if he’s seen a ghost.

 

“Rey’s old foster dad,” says Finn, looking stricken. Now that the man is gone, he can see the tremor in Finn’s hands, see the shock catching up with him. “The one she ran away from, back when she moved in with me. Before we met Poe.”

 

“How the hell did he trace you guys back here?” asks Poe, practically spitting now that the man is gone. Whatever self-control he exhibited before seems to have fallen to the wayside, and he paces the floor with such violence that he comes dangerously close to knocking over a display.

 

And Ben — Ben just stands there. Useless. Stupid. Imagining a slightly smaller, wider-eyed Rey, coming home from school to _that_.

 

“I don’t know,” says Finn. “I don’t even know what the hell he could possibly want. She aged out of the system.”

 

“We need to find a way to file a restraining order,” Poe is muttering to himself, the gears in his head turning even as he fumes. He stares out into the parking lot, making sure that the man’s car is gone before he heads back into the office and knocks on the door. “Sweetheart, you can come out now.”

 

Ben already knows she won’t be in there. He may not have known Rey as long as Finn and Poe have, but he _knows_ her. She would never sit still at a time like this. Only now does he fully understand why she seems to live her entire life with one foot out the door.

 

“Rey?” Poe tries again, turning the knob.

 

The back office is as empty as he assumed it would be.

 

“Shit,” says Finn.

 

Poe wrenches the back door open. “Where could she have gone?”

 

Ben pushes past him, through the open door, and takes off.

 

“Where are you _going?_ ” Poe calls after him.

 

Ben doesn’t answer. The truth is, he has no fucking clue. He sprints out into the parking lot, looking to the right, looking to the left, trying to decide which direction Rey might have gone — but he has never known that kind of fear. He cannot anticipate something he doesn’t understand himself.

 

He does the only thing he can do, and gets into his car and drives.

 

* * *

 

It is the longest night of Ben’s life.

 

After a few hours of driving senselessly around the neighborhood — checking his place, checking theirs, checking Kathryn’s, checking every library on the campus — Ben finally yanks his car to the side of the road, with the intention of calling her again. Instead he finds a dozen missed calls from Poe and Finn. Thinking one of them must have found her, he calls Poe back.

 

“She left her phone in the café,” he tells Ben. “She’s not going to pick up.”

 

“Fuck,” Ben mutters. “ _Fuck_.”

 

“Finn says she does this — did this sometimes,” says Poe, his voice uneasy. “That she would just go, and disappear for a little bit, and come back.”

 

Ben doesn’t dignify that with an answer. They both know that it wasn’t normal then, that it isn’t normal now. Even as Poe continues to mutter something inconsequential into the phone, Ben’s mind is reeling, trying to account for any single place he hasn’t thought of yet. She doesn’t even have a damn car. She can’t have gone far.

 

And that man is still out there. The idea of it curdles in his stomach.

  
“How long is a little bit?”

 

Poe seems to be talking through his teeth. “A few days.”

 

Ben hates himself for the question he asks next: “Has anyone checked with David?”

 

A beat. It wasn’t a mistake, then, that nobody mentioned David to him — but whatever embarrassment he feels over that is so secondary to his panic that he couldn’t possibly fathom it now.

 

“We did, yeah, Finn checked,” says Poe gruffly. “She’s, uh — not with him, either.”

 

He is so simultaneously furious and relieved that the feelings cannot reconcile within him, his chest too tight, forcing the air out of his lungs. He hangs up the phone brings his fist down on the dashboard, the sound of his fingers thudding against the plastic echoing through the car. It is entirely unsatisfying.

 

There’s nothing left to do. No place left to go. No one left to call.

 

And then — his phone is ringing. It’s a number he doesn’t recognize.

 

“Rey?”

 

For a moment he doesn’t hear anything, and then there’s the sound of slightly mangled laughter. “How did you know?”

 

Her voice is shallow. Flat. But it’s still _hers_ , and that relief alone seems to floor him, seems to make gravity start pressing down on him again.

 

“Where are you?” he says, starting up the car.

 

“Ben,” she says, with this weary sigh that sounds so unlike her, so much older than she is. “You don’t have to — ”

 

“Tell me where you are,” he says firmly.

 

The pause is so distinct that for a moment he is afraid that she is going to say no, that she’s going to hang up and take off all over again. Her presence on the phone seems fleeting, ghostly even, like she’s there without really being there. Like it’s somebody else on the other line.

 

“I’m outside the liquor store,” she finally says.

 

There’s only one in town, and of course it’s sketchy as fuck. “I’m coming,” he says, jerking the car into a right turn. “Stay on the phone.”

 

“No, you don’t have to — I’m fine, I was just calling so you could tell the others that I’m fine. I’m not coming back yet.”

 

“Yes, you are,” he says, his voice a low growl.

 

“Don’t do that,” she says. The words are quiet. Stern.

 

It takes him a moment to understand that she isn't just afraid, but that she's now afraid of  _him_. He would crush his eyes in frustration with himself if he weren’t so focused on the road. She spent her whole life getting yelled at by that man, that man who terrified her enough that she ran away for days at a time, that she fled the foster system as a teenager — and here he goes, ordering her around in that same tone, with that same edge.

 

“Please, Rey,” he says. “Let me come get you.”

 

The next breath she takes is a little watery. He can practically hear the tears in her throat. “I can’t stay here, Ben. I’ve got to leave. Finn’s name is on the lease, you don’t know Plutt like I do, he’ll find the address and — ”

 

“You can stay at my place,” Ben says at once. “He won’t be able to find you there.”

 

“I can’t do that to you.”

 

 _You can. You will_. But he knows better than to push her.

 

“Please,” he says instead. It’s all he can say without giving too much of himself away, a part of himself that he has no right to be giving in the first place. Every unsaid word seems to hinge on that single one, and he can only hope that she understands.

 

She doesn’t answer, but it doesn’t matter. He’s pulling into the lot, and her eyes are snapping up, red-rimmed and wide and then cowering from the glare of his headlights. She pulls the phone away from her ear and stares at him, her face so slack and grey that she is almost unrecognizable to him. If he didn’t know it was her, he might have just driven past.

 

He pulls the car over and gets out as she seems to come back to her senses again, and press the payphone back down on the receiver. Then she just sort of hovers there, looking at him with in wary, wretched, hopeless way, as if she is poised to shake her head at him or make some other gesture for him to leave. She is stiff as a board, and when he’s a few feet away from her, he stops awkwardly. He wants to hold her, wants to fix her, but he is afraid of what will happen if he comes too close.

 

Finally Rey extends her arm out to him. She’s holding a bottle; he takes it from her, feeling the full weight of it in his grip. Vodka. It’s open, but still entirely full.

 

“How did you …”

 

It’s a dumb question. She fled the foster system — of course she has a fake. The question isn’t how she got the alcohol, but why she had it in the first place.

 

“I thought you didn’t drink,” he says. It’s strange how the New Year’s party and their stint on the roof suddenly feels like it happened in another lifetime.

 

The harsh glare of the streetlight reflects the tear tracks on her cheeks. “I don’t,” she says, and then adds softly: “Anymore.”

 

He nods, and tucks the bottle into his jacket. She stares with that same vacant look on her face, and he feels some part of himself gathering his wits again, grounding himself by making a plan.

 

“We can go back to my place now,” he says, “and after we’ve slept, we’ll make a list of all the things you need. Finn can pack it all for you, and I’ll go pick it up, and Poe will look into getting the restraining order, and—oh.”

 

She hasn’t so much hugged him as collided with him. She presses her forehead into his chest, her arms limp at her sides, her face buried in his sweater. For a moment he is too stunned to react — to disarmed by the sweet warmth of her, by the closeness, by the tickle of her hair on his neck. Her shoulders start to shake in silent, unvoiced sobs, and then some instinct kicks in and he wraps his arms around her, holding her there as tightly as he dares.

 

“I’ve got you,” he tells her. There are a number of things he could say right now, things he has said to patients a thousand times over — _Everything is going to be okay. You’re safe now. It’s over._ But it all feels too flimsy now. He can only tell her the truth, and hope that it’s enough.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOOK WHO GOT HER SHIT TOGETHER AND WROTE SOME STUFF ON A WEEKDAY. Your reviews mean the WORLD to me guys. Makes the early morning fanfic writing hangovers all the more worth it when I drag my sorry self off to work :). Thank you, thank you, thank you!! I am so touched y'all are enjoying it!!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: Explicit discussion of verbal and domestic abuse.

An hour later, he and Rey are sitting on his couch, drinking tea out of the matching green mugs Kathryn insisted on buying for his apartment. After Ben found her he called Poe, who called Finn, who must have called David. Now it is quiet, and Rey is sitting perched in in the corner of the couch’s arm, swimming in his med school sweatpants and a t-shirt from some beer run Phas talked him into a few years ago. 

 

Her eyes are dry and puffy, her expression steady, her hands only quaking whenever she puts the tea down. But she is here, and she is whole, and Ben finds himself edging his eyes over to her every few seconds and staring as if he has to make sure. Every time she looks up at him with that same sad smile, and every time he feels something else in him splinter. 

 

For a long time Ben doesn’t say anything, because he is not sure what to say. He is remembering his first impressions of Rey. Reckless. Charming. Ridiculous. Effervescent. She seemed so unfettered, so unburdened, so untainted. He understands now that all of his irritation and all of his fear for her was borne out of some desire to keep her that way, to preserve her impossible, maddening light. And he understands now that for all of his attempts to keep her that way, he had no idea just how many years too late he was to save her. 

 

“He wasn’t that bad all of the time,” says Rey, after a lengthy quiet. 

 

Ben blinks over at her. He doesn’t have to ask to know who she’s talking about, but that doesn’t make it any less jarring to hear. 

 

“Just, uh — just when he got in one of his moods, or he got drunk, and then …” 

 

Ben’s throat is tight. He needs her to finish the sentence, but at the same time he cannot bear it. 

 

Rey shakes her head, and the thought shakes away with it. “I had Finn,” she says. There isn’t any sadness in this smile, at least. “I shouldn’t complain too much. I had Finn.” 

 

Ben shifts his weight, leaning toward her, trying to keep the anger out of his voice. “You don’t have to do that,” he says. “You don’t have to — pretend it’s okay. You don’t have to do that with me, Rey.” 

 

Her eyes widen, and he is almost as stunned as she is by the impact of his words. And then her eyes are misting again, and he hates himself for it. He didn’t mean to pressure her. He didn’t mean to upset her all over again.  

 

“I know,” she says, with this soft confidence in him that is both unexpected and gratifying. “It’s not that I — not that I don’t want to tell you.” She swallows hard. “Actually, sometimes it’s unnerving how much I trust you. I haven’t known you that long.” 

 

He doesn’t contest that. It’s true. It’s only been a few months since that first day he bothered to take notice of her. It’s only been a few months since every other waking thought, whether he liked it or not, was  _ Rey, Rey, Rey _ . 

 

“What really happened?” he asks carefully. Cautiously. 

 

She looks away from him, staring into what’s left of her tea. “He, uh …” She shakes her head again, but this time it’s as if she is shaking off something inconsequential, as if she is annoyed with herself for the weight she is putting on the words. “He yelled at me a lot. Told me dumb stuff. I was stupid, I was ugly, I wasn’t going to amount to anything, you know — stuff that he was just saying because he was angry, I don’t know.” 

 

Ben feels that same fire prickling in his chest again. “You’re not — ” He is stammering, a little bit senseless. “You’re not any of those things,” he says lamely, because he can’t sit here and tell her she’s beautiful, more beautiful than anything he has ever seen, not if he wants to hold onto the last shred of his conscience. “Rey, you’re whip smart, and ambitious, and — ”

 

“It’s okay,” she says, a ghost of a laugh escaping her. “Ben, really. They were just words. I got over it.” 

 

Ben doesn’t mean to push her, but there it is again, that surge of anger, that protectiveness that he can’t quell. “It was more than words, though. Wasn’t it?” 

 

She closes her eyes for a moment. “He hurt me, yes, if that’s what you’re asking. It wasn’t very often. I’d run away, it would get cold or I’d get hungry, and I’d come back. He wouldn’t apologize, but he’d leave me alone for a week or so. Sometimes it was almost a good thing, because of that,” she says in this detached sort of way, as if it happened to somebody else. “And then … one day, I ran away for good. A few days after Finn’s eighteenth birthday. He had a place, he’d only just gotten out of the system, and really, he had no room for me, but — ” Her eyes water again, and she turns to him, a little embarrassed this time. “Well, you know Finn.” 

 

He doesn’t. Not in the way that she does. He is remembering the way Finn hugged him that night after Rey had the concussion, the way he was so taken aback by it at the time. Now that he understands he is stricken with the unprecedented urge to hug Finn himself, if that could ever fully communicate how grateful he is for everything Finn did to keep her whole, to keep her alive. 

 

“Rey …” he murmurs, because nothing he says will suffice. Her eyes flit up at him at the sound of her name. He realizes that for all of his manic, neurotic, ridiculous preoccupation with her, he has very rarely said her name out loud. 

 

He leans in slightly, and so does she, until her head is on his shoulder. He can still feel her shaking, but in a few moments it dulls a bit and she settles the warm weight of herself into him. If he had his way, he would never let a bad thing happen to her again. 

 

He opens his mouth to say something, his heart thrumming in his chest. He isn’t sure what, and he knows he probably shouldn’t, but she is here and he is overwhelmed and he can’t stop the words from spilling out, stupid, sloppy, the timing all wrong, and — 

 

And then there’s a knock at the door. 

 

Rey is upright in a moment, so quickly that her lingering warmth on his shoulder feels like it’s from a ghost. Her eyes flit toward the door with unmistakable fear. 

 

“It’s Finn,” Ben reminds her gently. “I told him to bring your stuff.” 

 

“Right,” she says, with a shaky little smile. “Of course.” 

 

He gets up to answer the door, Rey padding along quietly behind him. He swings it open and gapes stupidly in his own doorway, his brain unable to reconcile the fact that it is not Finn standing on his apartment’s front steps, but rather a broadly-grinning, decidedly un-Finn Kathryn. 

 

“Kathryn,” Ben manages, her name coming out of him like a bullet. 

 

She throws her arms around him, knocking him in the shoulders with her swinging backpack. “Hello, you,” she squeals, and then her lips are on his and everything feels sharp and distinct and  _ wrong, _ but there is nothing to do but react. “I thought I’d surprise you, I had an unexpected — Rey?” 

 

He sees something unfamiliar flicker in Kathryn’s eyes as she takes in Rey, lingering on the sweatpants, on the shirt, and then back at Ben. Her voice is disquietingly neutral when she speaks again. “What’s going on?” 

 

“I’m sorry,” says Rey, all breathy like she’s going to start crying again. “I’ll just — I’ll go — ”

 

“No,” Ben and Kathryn say at the exact same time, their eyes snapping on each other again, his pleading and hers entirely confused. 

 

“No, no, it’s fine,” Rey rambles, “you guys should catch up, I’m sorry, I’ll just — ”

 

“Are you okay?” Kathryn asks, stepping past Ben and putting a hand on Rey’s shoulder. 

 

Rey opens her mouth like a fish, like she can’t quite believe that Kathryn is standing there. Ben doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t want to share anything Rey isn’t comfortable with Kathryn knowing — but it turns out he worried in vain. 

 

“My old foster dad turned up,” she says, almost apologetically, lowering her chin into her chest. “We think he has Finn’s address, so …” 

 

The last of the sharpness in Kathryn’s face all but evaporates as she takes Rey into her arms in that natural, nurturing way of hers. Rey hugs her back in the regular way a person hugs another person, not in the desperate way she fell into Ben in the parking lot a few hours ago. He is relieved that she seems to be her usual self again, but secretly, and somewhat awfully, he is relieved to be the one that she can be vulnerable with this time around. 

 

After a few moments they pull away from each other, and the look Kathryn gives him is unmistakable in its meaning — her eyes are gleaming at him with a quiet, fierce kind of pride. It takes everything in him not to look away, the guilt bubbling up in him like blood from a wound. 

 

“Okay,” says Kathryn, taking a step back and drinking the two of them in. “Correct me if I’m wrong … but I think this calls for pancakes.” 

 

For the first time that day, Rey laughs out loud. “That sounds perfect.” 

 

Ben finds himself smiling too, whether out of the relief of the tension breaking or the relief of seeing Rey act like herself again, he isn’t sure. He finds himself feeling oddly grateful to Kathryn, even as the guilt gnaws at him fresher than ever. But all of it falls away with surprising ease as the three of them head into the kitchen, fire up the stove, and make some of the most misshapen, questionable pancakes Ben has ever seen, smashing them into each other’s faces, sticky syrup leaking all over the table. It's awkward, it's messy, it's unexpected, but it weirdly make this place feel like a home. 

 

* * *

 

Two days pass. Rey tries to protest and tell him she’ll find some place else to stay, but Kathryn shuts her down before Ben even gets the chance. The weekend goes by in a rush, punctuated by the simultaneous guilt and thrill of having Rey so near, all the while sleeping in the same bed as Kathryn. He wakes up in the morning to Kathryn’s peaceful, slumbering face, then stumbles out to the bathroom passing Rey’s small form curled into the corner of his couch. He leans in to kiss Kathryn and looks out to Rey pouring milk into her cereal. He holds hands with Kathryn and comes home to Rey frowning over a medical text. It is surreal, like living in some kind of twisted dream. 

 

Kathryn has a flight out late Sunday night, and hugs him with an unusual kind of fierceness. 

 

“You take care of her,” she says to him. 

 

His throat is tight. 

 

“I’ll see you in a few weeks.” 

 

He hugs her hard, kisses her in their familiar way, and waves as she leaves the carpool lane for the ticketing counter. He is happy she is leaving, and he hates himself for it. 

 

* * *

 

Another week passes, but most of the time it’s almost as if Rey isn’t staying with him at all. She makes herself scarce for all of the daylight hours. He knows she isn’t at the coffee shop, since Poe insisted she stay away until he sorted out the details of the restraining order against Plutt. He knows she isn’t at school, because the semester just finished, and summer classes won’t start up for a few more weeks. It is only logical, then, to assume that Rey is with the one person who isn’t inextricably involved in this mess — David. 

 

But she still comes home around eight o’clock every night, still insists on sleeping on his couch (“You’re aggressively too tall to sleep on it, anyway,” she informed him), still shoves the coffee put on every time she hears him waking up in the morning. It is easy not to think about where she is or who she’s with during the day when he still comes home to her at night. 

 

It is strange how easily parts of his life open up to make room for her. They discover they are both awful cooks, and spend a few nights in a row openly mocking each other over their failed attempt at lasagna on Monday, followed by a failed attempt at barbeque chicken on Tuesday, followed by Wednesday’s moderately successful attempt at pizza that came frozen out of a box. They binge watch old shows that have been cluttering his DVR. They do imitations of almost all of Ben’s co-workers, which ends with Rey psychoanalyzing each of them individually based on their coffee orders. 

 

Still, there is the lingering unease, the razor sharp edge lurking just beneath the semblance of normalcy. Rey doesn’t sleep. He knows because the few times he has left his room to use the bathroom or come home late from a shift, Rey’s eyes will be wide open, staring out into the dark of the living room, just before she snaps them shut and pretends that she’s out. Every time she changes her clothes or brushes her teeth she puts everything back in an orderly way into her backpack, as if she is prepared at any moment to scoop it up and run out the door. He doesn’t mention it, because he doesn’t want her to feel any more self-conscious about it than she already is, but privately it worries him that she thinks of him that way — that she thinks that there is a scenario where she’d have to get out of here, fast. 

 

After that first week, nobody has heard from Plutt, and Finn has the paperwork for the restraining order underway. Ben knows his time with Rey is almost up, but he finds himself reluctant to acknowledge it. 

 

“Dude, you’re on  _ Tinder? _ ” 

 

“Uh, duh. You realize we’re right next to a college campus with, like, thousands of hot girls who want to date doctors, right?” 

 

Ben rolls his eyes as he walks into the locker room outside of the hospital’s basement gym. 

 

“Besides, we can’t all bang the hot barista like David here.” 

 

Before Ben can even fully register the words, a locker door slams. 

 

“That’s — don’t talk about Rey like that,” Ben hears him saying.  _ David _ . Ben feels his fingers curling into his palms. 

 

“Oh, come on, man, loosen up a little. You’re dating a 19-year-old . You just happened to meet her in real life, is all, you lucky asshole.” 

 

“I am a lucky asshole,” says David, a clear edge in his voice. “Because Rey’s a great person. I mean, yeah, she’s a little younger — ”

 

“Dude, she’s a  _ teenager _ — ”

 

“What’s it to you?” David snaps. 

 

“Awww, look at David,” another one of the interns says mockingly, “he’s in  _ looooove _ — ”

 

“Yeah,” says David, his voice flat and unapologetic. “I am. You got a problem with that?” 

 

There are a few beats of silence wherein Ben feels a sick kind of chill in his veins. He can’t see the interns from between the rows of lockers, but he doesn’t have to see them to imagine the awkwardness of the exchange. He turns to leave, his ears hot, his blood boiling. 

 

“Aw, come on, David, we’re just kidding around — ”

 

“It’s not funny to me,” he mutters, his voice suddenly way too close. Ben freezes, and realizes too late that David is heading for the same exit that he is, so quickly that the two of them nearly barrel right into each other. 

 

David’s eyes flit over to him apologetically, but the instant they connect it’s like staring into headlights. 

 

“Dr. Solo,” he stammers. 

 

Ben frowns, unclenching his fists, his palms sweaty at his sides. He knows who David is, of course, but this is the first time that either of them have so much as acknowledged each other.

 

“Shit,” says David, and then, remarkably, the golden boy seems to lose composure. He runs a jittery hand through his stupidly perfect hair, shifting his weight in a nervous, very un-surgical intern way. “Oh, shit, uh — I’m sorry I said shit, I’m sorry that I — jeez. Wow. I’m sorry.” 

 

Ben just stares at him for a moment, listening as his buddies leave out the other exit, still ribbing each other over dumb stuff. “Relax,” he says sharply. 

 

David lets out a breathy little laugh. “I just — I know you’re friends with Rey, she talks about you all the time, and I — shit.” He grins a little manically. He grins the way a person in love would grin. “I haven’t told her yet, is all,” he says. “I mean — we’ve only been dating a few weeks, I don’t want to scare her, you know how she is.” 

 

Ben’s tongue is too thick for his mouth to answer. 

 

“You won’t tell her, right?” he says, some awkward mix of casual and pleading. “I mean, when she gets back from vacation.” 

 

“Vacation?” Ben repeats, before he can stop himself. 

 

“Yeah,” says David, a little warily. “You know she’s upstate, right? Visiting her friends?” 

 

Ben’s face can’t decide how to arrange itself. “Right,” he says slowly. The selfish part of him that is glad that Rey is avoiding David is immediately squelched by a much more present concern — if Rey hasn’t been hanging out with David in all the time she’s been out of the apartment, then where the hell  _ has _ she been? 

 

“So you won’t tell her?” David repeats, shaking Ben out of his thoughts. 

 

“No,” says Ben. 

 

David flinches a bit, and only then does Ben realize the severity he used to say it. He forces himself to take a breath. To remove himself from the situation. He takes in this boyish, nervous, ridiculous intern, for once clean of all the bravado, for once entirely and shakily sincere, and he can see it — all of it. 

 

He can see the way the fierce way he loves her, the way he has already forgiven her quirks, the way he will understand when Rey tells him the dark truths Ben already knows. He sees the small seed that has been planted, and what it could someday grow to be. He sees Rey happy with this man, with this solid, stable,  _ normal _ man who can give her everything that she never had growing up, everything she so obviously has craved.  

 

“I won’t tell her,” says Ben, the room suddenly too small to hold him. “But you should.” 

 

David has this stupid little half-grin on his face, looking at Ben like he can’t quite believe it. “You think so?” 

 

The words are bitter on his tongue. “Yeah. I do.” 

 

He turns around then to leave the locker room, to end this miserable conversation before he can dig his grave any deeper. He is almost at the door when David says one last thing. 

 

“Thanks, Dr. Solo,” he says. “It, uh — well, it means a lot coming from you.” 

 

Ben turns just slightly and nods, because he doesn’t trust himself to do anything else. As he clears the locker room and moves swiftly for the exit, bursting out of the back doors of the hospital and into the cold air of the parking lot, the worst of it still humming in his head, growing louder and louder —  _ she talks about you all the time — it means a lot coming from you — so you won’t tell her?  _

 

He is stricken with the sudden desire to batter his fist into something, but then, just as quickly, he is exhausted beyond words. It’s for the best, he tells himself, breathing in air so heavy it seems to defy nature. She will be happy, and he will learn how to be. It’s for the best. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I PROMISE THERE WILL BE SOME ACTION SOON. Slow burn is so slow. Like slow-roasted coffee. See how good I am at metaphors? Derp I am writer hear me roar. 
> 
> THANK YOU thank you thank you for your continued support, you guys are my everything <3.


	10. Chapter 10

When Ben comes home that night he is swollen with self-pity, with regret, with all kinds of things he won’t let himself name. It’s dark in the apartment, so he doesn’t bother to collect himself as he flicks on the light and stares dully inside. 

 

“Are you okay?” 

 

He flinches as if Rey has held up a knife to his neck. There she is, sitting in that same corner of the couch, her knees tucked into her chest. 

 

“Jesus,” he manages, too jarred to recover. 

 

“Sorry,” she says quickly, “sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

 

“No, I … are  _ you _ okay?” he says, realizing she was just sitting here in the dark. 

 

She smirks at him lightly. “I asked you first.” 

 

Despite everything, he finds himself smirking back. But in this light he can see plainly that she hasn’t just had trouble sleeping. She looks as if she hasn’t slept all week. Her face is pale, her eyes bloodshot, the bags under them more pronounced than ever. She holds herself as if there is some quiet tremor in her bones, and looks almost like a twig about to snap. 

 

“I’m just … long day, is all,” he says dismissively. “But you’re exhausted.” 

 

She pats a spot on the couch for him. “Nothing a few episodes of  _ Law and Order _ won’t fix,” she says impishly. “I bought some popcorn — ”

 

“Rey, seriously,” says Ben, taking a few steps closer to her. “When’s the last time you slept?” 

 

She bristles, the smirk fading a bit. “I …”

 

“And where do you go all day?” he asks, before he can stop himself. “I know you’re not at home, or the coffee shop, and I know you’re not with David, so where are you?” 

 

Only after Rey cringes does he realize what he has accidentally confessed. He watches her internalize it, watches as her shoulders tense and her eyes close and she seems to square herself in a way that makes her seem much older than she is. He feels petty for bringing it up, but he can’t take it back now. 

 

“Does David know I’m here?” she asks in this measured voice, one that doesn’t sound like hers. 

 

It strikes him unexpectedly, that she asks this instead of answering him. He has forgotten, in his haste, that she cares about David every bit as much as he cares about her. 

 

“No,” he says gruffly. “Tell me, how are your friends upstate?” 

 

“You sound angry,” she says, a little too astutely. 

 

He shakes his head, breathing out of his teeth. “I’m not. I’m sorry. I’m not, I’m just — confused.” 

 

She raises her eyebrows at him. There is somewhat of a question in her expression, a murky one that he understands the meaning of even though it frustrates him.  _ What exactly are you confused about? _ she seems to be asking, when she damn well knows why he’s confused. He’s confused that she never bothered to tell him about David, why she’s lying to him, where the hell she is when she’s not here, what on earth is going through her mind now that she knows that Ben  _ knows _ . 

 

“I haven’t talked to David about any of this yet,” she says. There is a weariness in her voice that he feels echoed in his own bones. 

 

Ben digs his nails into his palms, but his words are steady, gentle even. “He seems like he could handle it,” he says. “He cares about you a lot.” 

 

Rey nods quietly. “It’s not that,” she says. She smiles at him, cocking her head in this half-hearted way and says, “I like that he doesn’t know about my past. I like pretending it didn’t happen. It was working out just fine, before Plutt showed up, and I — ” She stops herself, as if she has said more than she meant to, her eyes downcast. “I want him to love me for the person I am right now. Not despite the person I was back then.”

 

For a few moments all Ben can do is stare at her. “That …” He knows he is going to say something stupid, but for once he doesn’t even try to reign himself in. “I’m sorry, Rey. But that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” 

 

Her eyes are blazing when she looks up at him, almost feral in her exhaustion. 

 

“You can’t — you can’t just undo the past,” says Ben, “it’s a part of you. And I don’t mean Plutt showing up like that, I mean it’s a  _ part _ of you, forever, whether or not you want it to be.” He casts aside his own guilt, unwittingly thinking of every call he ignored from his mother, every awful thing he spewed to his father, all the bridges he burned in his early twenties. All the things he wishes weren’t a part of him, but inextricably are and will be forever. 

 

“But that’s the thing, Rey,” he continues. “That’s what you do, is you find someone who loves you, not  _ despite _ everything else. You just — you find someone who loves you. Period. For all of it.” 

 

It is ineloquent and rambly as hell, the last damning evidence that he would have failed as an English major, but the point still seems to drive home. He sees the words settling in the space between them, watches as something in her face crumples and she asks him, “Why are you telling me this?” 

 

“Because,” he says, floundering, losing his momentum. It feels like he is speeding a car into a dead end and slamming the brakes. The reality of it all is harsh on his tongue. “Because if you’re serious about David, then he deserves a chance. He deserves the truth. He deserves  _ you _ .”

 

It is, perhaps, the most he has ever spoken to her all at once. And it is, undoubtedly, the stupidest fucking thing he has ever done. 

 

Rey nods solemnly. “Okay,” she says. 

 

Ben shifts his weight onto his other foot, feeling like a stranger in his own apartment. “Okay,” he says back, a little uneasily. 

 

Rey clears her throat. “So, uh … now that we’ve gotten that out of the way,” she says, her voice lifting a bit, “what about that popcorn?” 

 

Ben shakes his head, and does something he doesn’t quite mean to do — he presses a hand to her forehead, pushing her hair back from her face. Her eyes snap up to his, both curious and caught off-guard. 

 

“You need to sleep,” he says. “You can’t go on like this.” 

 

She leans her head into his touch, and he can’t tell if it’s intentional or not. He expects her to protest in some way, but instead she says in a small voice, “It’s not … I’ve been trying. I just can’t.” 

 

He has some sleeping pills in his bedside drawer. They’re extremely mild as far as sleeping pills go — as a doctor, he’s not necessarily the biggest fan of them — but he figures that about now they can’t do anymore harm than good. He shifts himself away from the couch and retrieves one of them for her, with a glass of water. 

 

“This’ll work?” she asks, a little skeptically. 

 

“For tonight, it should,” he says. “We’ll figure out a better way tomorrow. I don’t want you to get hooked on these or anything.” 

 

There’s a flicker of something in her face when he says that, and he remembers the weight of the vodka bottle in his grasp when she handed it to him the other night. But before he can say anything she pops the pill into her mouth and drains the glass of water. 

 

They talk a bit inconsequentially after that. After ten minutes of back and forth about what went on at the hospital that day, or what Rey thinks the next show they should binge watch as a group is, he sees her starting to fade out — and even then, he sees her trying to fight it. He almost feels like he is tricking her when he sits next to her on the couch, when he intentionally lowers his voice a little more every time he talks and slowly moves his way toward her, letting the weight of her sag into him. And then finally, after a few minutes, he trails off in the middle of a sentence about some guy who gluegunned his shoe to his fingers and realizes that Rey is fast asleep. 

 

He sits there for a few minutes with her head on his shoulder, with her chest breathing in and out and in and out, the gentle pressure of it reassuring against his arm. Once he is sure she’s really out, he carefully extricates himself, easing her down onto the couch cushions and pulling the blanket up over her. 

 

He wills himself not to stare. He wills himself not to think. He opens the bottle and takes one of the pills for himself, deciding that whatever the hell he feels right now, it can wait until morning. 

 

* * *

 

He wakes unexpectedly around three in the morning, with the distinct and inexplicable sense that something is wrong. He almost expects when he pads out into the hall that Rey will be gone. That she will have finally scooped up that carefully packed backpack and gone off for wherever she is when she isn’t here. Seeing her curled up on the couch fills him with an immediate, bleary-eyed relief. 

 

Or at least it does until he sees the look on her face, hears the hitch in her breath. 

 

For a moment he thinks that she’s crying and he freezes, unsure of what to do, or if he should even do anything at all. But her eyes are closed, and she isn’t crying. She is muttering in her sleep, words that he can’t catch, words that come out in an occasional harsh gasp. 

 

She’s dreaming, he realizes. No — she’s having a nightmare. 

 

“Hey,” he says quietly, pressing a hesitant hand to her shoulder. She stirs just slightly, her eyes still clamped shut. “Rey. Wake up.” 

 

She does, blinking slowly, her eyes still vacant in the dream. She looks at him without really looking at him. In the quiet of his living room the next few seconds seem to stretch into eternity, his brain not quite able to process the subtle lift of her hand until her fingers are skimming the stubble on his cheek. He can’t move, paralyzed by her touch. It’s as bold as she used to be, back when they first met, back in that infinitely short time when they might have just been  _ friends _ and she was yanking up his sleeve to see his tattoo, or nudging him on the shoulder, or poking her pencil’s eraser into his forehead. 

 

“I love you,” she murmurs into quiet, her eyes solemn and fixed on his. 

 

Ben doesn’t breathe. He lifts his hand up and strokes a lock of stray hair, pushing it behind her ear. “You’re dreaming,” he tells her softly. 

 

Her eyes slide shut, her body going slack as she falls back into herself. Her last words come out in a whisper: “I know.” 

 

* * *

 

When Rey wakes up the next day it’s nearly ten in the morning. She sits straight up on the couch, her hair a sticky, ridiculous mess, her face puffy from sleep. He is in the middle of brewing coffee (decaf for her, which he may have forgotten to mention), and she wakes so suddenly that he isn’t entirely sure what to do with himself — he has no idea what she remembers of last night, or if she remembers at all. But then she practically blinds him with a smile and that’s all the answer he needs. 

 

“Shit,” she says candidly. “That stuff really works.” 

 

Ben clears his throat. “Yeah, well,” he says. “Don’t get used to it.” 

 

She swipes at her eyes with her palms, rubbing herself out of sleep. “What time is it?” She answers her own question looking at the digital clock on his oven. “ _ Crap _ .” 

 

In another moment she’s Hurricane Rey again, yanking a sweater on over the shirt she slept in, pulling a pair of jeans and a sports bra out of her backpack and scurrying toward the bathroom. 

 

“Where are you going?” Ben calls after her. 

 

A few seconds later she’s bursting out the bathroom door again, tugging her hair into a bun and shoving her shoes onto her feet. “My side hustle,” she says. 

 

“Your — what?” he asks, wondering why Rey is suddenly talking like a 50-year-old drug lord from a bad crime show. 

 

“I, uh — I’ve got this thing on Craigslist. I fix people’s broken cars and and bikes and stuff.” She snorts. “Some hoverboards, too. Jesus, these kids.” 

 

He ignores that last bit because “kids” to her probably means “infants” to him. “ _ That’s _ what you’ve been doing all week?” he asks. 

 

She frowns at him on her way out the door. “Well, yeah,” she says. “I’m not working at the coffee shop, and I’ve got to pay rent, and I’ve got to pay you back, and — ”

 

“Whoa,” he says, nearly dropping his toast. “Rey, you’re not ‘paying me back’ for jack shit — ”

 

“Let’s get all bent outta shape about this later, I’ll be back in a few hours, have a good day, bye!” 

 

The door slams behind her. Ben stands there in her wake, and it’s as if the spell that has been holding him together has suddenly broken; without her here, there is no facade he has to keep up, no barrier preventing him from reliving last night’s exchange over and over and over again. 

 

She was half-asleep. Delusional. No wonder she thought he was David — it would only make sense, seeing as he was one of the main topics of discussion before she finally drifted off to sleep. But it doesn’t make it any less excruciating, doesn’t make the echo of her voice any less trapped between his ears. He doesn’t have work today, but he suddenly  _ needs _ to get out of the house, and soon enough he is throwing on his coat and heading out the door and walking aimlessly out into the morning, his breakfast untouched on the table. 

 

The next thing he knows he’s right back where he started all those months ago, in the same placed that damned him — Jakku Java. 

 

“Ben,” says Poe, with marked surprise. “You got my voicemail, then?” 

 

It takes Ben a moment to acknowledge him. The conversation is so ordinary, so familiar, but he feels so far removed from reality that he can’t quite ground himself in it. 

 

“No,” he says, suddenly realizing he doesn’t have his phone on him. 

 

“Oh,” says Poe. “Well — good news. Not only did the restraining order go through, but Plutt got himself arrested for dealing some place upstate.” 

 

Finn is grinning with a malice in his eyes Ben didn’t think he was capable of. “Serves him right.” 

 

“Anyway, Rey’s moving her stuff back in this afternoon, so she’ll be out of your hair,” says Poe. 

 

Ben hates the way he says it, the way his chin tilts just slightly, his eyes looking at Ben like he knows something Ben doesn’t.

 

“Good,” says Ben stiffly, and he is surprised by how much he means it. It only occurs to him now just how unbearable it would be to have her in the apartment for even one more day, after what happened last night. His skin is crawling, burning, prickling, her words on him like an awful second skin. He doesn’t want to love her. And if he can’t have that, then he wants her out of his sight. 

 

Poe’s smile falters slightly, but he doesn’t say anything as he hands Ben his usual order and Finn makes small talk about another one of their coworkers. Ben nods and grunts and answers at the appropriate moments, then asks to borrow the phone in the back to make a call. It’s the only number he knows, because it hasn’t changed in 30 years. 

 

“Hello?” 

 

“Hey,” he says, adding an unnecessary, “it’s me.” 

 

“Ben,” his mother says warmly, if not a little uncertainly. 

 

He clears his throat. For a moment he stops feeling guilty, stops feeling torn, stops feeling anything but completely and utterly stupid. 

 

“Would it be okay — I mean, if you’re not busy,” he stammers. It occurs to him that he has no script for this, for how to ask things from her anymore. “I was wondering if I could come up and visit tomorrow.” 

 

There is a beat on the other line, and the words he already expected: “Of course, Ben. That sounds lovely.” 

 

He holds the receiver away from his mouth as he blows out a breath. He hangs up the phone a few minutes later, but even then he knows that he might as well have just given all of his secrets away to her while she was on the line — he could never keep anything from his mother for long. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would leave more notes about how I love you all to pieces but I am so tired that I apologized to SEVERAL inanimate objects I ran into today. Just know that I love you all to pieces. And that if you were a fire hydrant, I would have run into you and apologized to you profusely, because I have manners, dammit.


	11. Chapter 11

It doesn’t take long to pack a few things in a backpack for the morning. It only takes two hours to drive upstate, and he figures he’ll leave early, make a day of it, and come back before anyone even knows he’s gone. He waits for that familiar feeling of dread to settle in — there is always so much unresolved tension between him and his parents, or at the very least, he can’t help but feel that there is — but he is suddenly so exhausted with his own mind that there simply isn’t room to feel anything else. 

 

A few hours pass. He tries to catch up on some paperwork, tries turning on the television. The apartment is maddeningly quiet without her in it, and the day is maddeningly long with the anticipation of her walking through the door. He pushes it aside, pushes it aside, and when night finally falls and he can’t, he pulls the six pack out of the fridge and starts to drink. 

 

It occurs to him that he hasn’t had anything to drink really since before Kathryn’s fellowship began. Occasionally the two of them would have a few glasses of wine over dinner, but between his hours on call and hanging out with Rey’s crew, he hasn’t really had the opportunity. It only occurs to him now because his head immediately starts to get a little float-y, like he’s 18 and swiping warm beer out from under Hux’s regulation dorm bed all over again. 

 

When he’s about four beers in and mindlessly watching the seventh episode in a row of some dumb competition on the Food Network, he starts to feel a little sorry for himself. It’s too early to call Kathryn with the three hour time difference — not that he should be calling her in this state anyway. He considers calling up any other friends, and then spirals into yet another layer of self-indulgent pity when he remembers that Rey and her circle  _ are _ his only friends outside of the hospital. 

 

It’s about then that he hears a knock on the door. For a moment he is sure he’s imagining it. 

 

“Who is it?” he asks gruffly.

 

“It’s me,” she has the audacity to say. “I left my headphones, I think.” 

 

Ben shuts his eyes for a moment, willing himself to have imagined her. “Where?” he asks, without getting up. 

 

“The couch?”

 

He looks around and doesn’t see it.  _ They’re not here _ , he’s tempted to say, and just send her off. He doesn’t want to see her. He especially doesn’t want  _ her _ to see  _ him _ . But she already knows he’s here, and he can’t think of any logical reason not to open the damn door. 

 

He gets up from the couch a little slower than he meant to, the world feeling kind of slippery. The beer. He’s a little drunker than he thought, but he’s not exactly falling over himself. He’s an adult, for christ’s sake. He can function like a human being after having a few beers. 

 

He opens the door and there she is, all bright smiles and wind-swept hair, her cheeks red from the cold. He sees a car idling in the driveway, one he doesn’t recognize, and he knows without even looking up that it belongs to David. By the time his eyes find Rey her smile has faltered almost imperceptibly — or maybe quite apparently. In his murky state he can’t tell if he is noticing too much of her or not noticing anything at all. 

 

“Bad time?” she asks with a nervous laugh. 

 

“No,” he says, moving out of the doorway. He lifts a hand up at David, who waves back in a friendly way through the car’s windshield. Asshole. 

 

Rey moves quickly through his apartment, in that sprightly way of hers. He finds himself alternately staring at her and determined not to; she doesn’t seem to notice, seeming all too at home here, rifling through his cushions and poking her head behind his drawers and flicking on the light in his bathroom. 

 

_ They’re just headphones. Forget about it _ , says a caustic voice in the back of his head. He swallows it down, but there it is again, in the curl of his fist, in the humiliation welling in his chest:  _ What the fuck does it matter?  _

 

His bitterness stuns him for a moment, both in its suddenness and its familiarity. It is a feeling he hasn’t felt in such force since that awful phase he cut himself off from his family, that destructive, self-absorbed angst he felt when his first serious relationship ended and he immediately tailspinned into the ugliest version of himself he had ever seen. But even in recognizing this, even in acknowledging the awfulness of it, there is nothing he can do to quelch it. She has been here for thirty seconds, a minute at the most, and already he is back in that awful, resentful, miserable place, the back of his throat burning from the beer, his neck aching with anger. 

 

“You better hurry up,” he says flatly. “Don’t want to keep David waiting.” 

 

She rolls her eyes at him. “He’ll live,” she says cheekily. She thinks Ben is teasing her. 

 

And if he had a shred of common sense, he would have accepted that for the goddamn miracle it was, for that literal sign from the universe to  _ shut the fuck up _ , instead of saying what he says next. 

 

“You still lying to him?” 

 

Her eyes are a bit wary when she pauses in her search to look at him. It’s clear right then that she knows — he can see the ripple of her realization, and then of something else he can’t quite detect. Not quite fear, not quite disappointment, but something in between. She knows he’s been drinking, and he stares back at her, almost daring her to mention it. 

 

“No, actually,” she says lightly. Her entire body seems to tense up, her movements in the apartment more deliberate, her eyes flickering out the window to David’s car. “I told him the truth a few hours ago. Like you said I should.” 

 

“Oh,” says Ben dumbly. 

 

She nods, clearing her throat. “Anyway, I guess they’re not here,” she says, heading toward the door. “Let me know if you — ”

 

“What did he say?” says Ben. The words come out too fast, and he has that sensation of watching something fragile fall from the other side of the room with no ability to stop it from happening. 

 

Rey’s eyes take on this warmth that sears him. She opens her mouth, her lips curling up at the edges like she is considering whether to tell him or not. “He told me he loves me,” she finally says. The look on her face is so infuriatingly dreamy that she probably looks far more intoxicated than he does. “You were right, Ben.” 

 

“And what did you say?” Ben says tersely. 

 

If she is rattled by his words, she only shows it for half of a beat before recovering. “Ben,” she says, a little warily, a little warningly. 

 

“Do you love him?” he persists. He isn’t just holding a match to this bridge, but dousing it in oil. He knows what he’s doing, he knows that he shouldn’t, but he is powerless to stop himself. 

 

She doesn’t answer. He is expecting a lot of things from her in that moment — a defiant declaration of her love for David. Anger at him for being so inexplicably rude to her. Maybe even fear. Something,  _ anything _ that would rattle him out of this, that would make him see reason, that would bring him back to his senses and force him to apologize. 

 

What she does instead is much worse. 

 

“I’m going away for a few days with David,” she says, in this gentle, forgiving way. She is talking to him as if he is a child. “We can talk when I get back.” 

 

“Going where?” Ben asks, even as her hand is on the knob. He is desperate to come up with some excuse for her to stay — as much as he doesn’t want her here, the idea of her leaving is that much more unbearable. 

 

“To, um — ” She looks up at him a little apologetically. “I’m going to his parents’ ranch upstate.” 

 

It sinks into the very core of him, and somehow doesn’t touch him at all. “Oh.” 

 

She takes a quick breath, an anxious one, and then she’s tripping over herself. “He’s going to teach me how to ride a horse,” she says, trying to make this casual, trying to make this light. “I’ve always wanted to learn to ride a horse, he said I could even go on the trails, and then we’re going to pick apples, and his mom makes really great s’mores, he says, so we might camp a little bit, the weather’s supposed to be — ”

 

“Don’t go.” 

 

She stops so abruptly that he might have pushed the words into her body like a physical force. Her eyes widen. Time seems to screech to a halt, painful and deliberate. It’s too late to take it back. 

 

“I’ll be back in a few days,” she says, still willing to try to brush this off even as he so clearly is coming undone. 

 

He shakes his head. He’s in too deep now. It is self-destructive, it is hopeful, it is awful, it is sure — it is everything he has held back for months now, and it is all at once too much for his body to hold. 

 

“I — I’m …” 

 

The words stall in his throat. Jesus  _ fucking _ Christ, he can’t speak, and there she is looking at him with this horror mingling with awe, like he is some kind of nightmare she has conjured. 

 

“Rey, I …” 

 

He takes a step toward her, and she flinches so visibly that it steals all of the air in the room. Whatever hazy rationalization he could make for himself vanishes in an instant. What the  _ fuck _ was he going to do just now?  _ Kiss  _ her? Nevermind David, nevermind  _ Kathryn _ , nevermind the incredibly fragile trust he has earned from Rey that is now splintering in front of his very eyes. 

 

She curls into herself, the cave of her shoulders unmistakable. That light he has so admired, has been so drawn to, has all but dimmed in the span of a few seconds. 

 

“You’re drunk,” she says in a whisper. 

 

“No,” he says, shaking his head, taking a step back away from her. He needs to get back in control of this situation, in control of  _ himself _ . “That’s not — that’s not what I — ”

 

“You’re  _ drunk _ ,” she says again, with a little more bite than he expects. He sees it now — that fear hardening into anger, the practiced way her face steels herself to him. He realizes with a fresh wave of remorse just how familiar this kind of interaction is to her, just how many times she has dealt with someone as senseless and stupid and drunk as he is right now. 

 

Her face softens. It is more than he deserves.

 

“You miss Kathryn,” she says gently. 

 

He wants to shake his head.  _ I love you _ . He wants to take those few steps and close the distance between them and know that it won’t scare her.  _ I love you _ . He wants to undo the last five minutes of his life, pay whatever penance he has to pay, just erase it all and make it go away.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says. She starts to nod, but he isn’t finished yet. Every atom in his body betrays him, and then — “I love you.” 

 

After that the room feels like a vacuum. The air is so static, so still, that everything around them seems to lose its dimension. He is not aware of how much time passes, but only the slam of his heart beating against his ribs, cinching his chest tighter and tighter with every pulse. Rey is staring at the floor, and he is staring at Rey, and nothing he does or says will ever make this okay again. 

 

“That’s not fair,” she says. She isn’t looking at him, still burning her eyes into the carpet. He isn’t sure who she is referring to, herself or Kathryn, and then he understands she means them both. 

 

Her hand is still on the doorknob, but she is still as a statue. He isn’t sure what they are waiting for now. He knows it is too late for him to undo what he has done, and too soon to apologize for it. It all comes down to her. It always has. 

 

“I mean, look at you, Ben,” she says. “You don’t — you don’t know what you want. If you did, you wouldn’t be telling me this now. When you’re drunk, and with another woman.”

 

Her words are so rational, so clean, like the edge of a blade.

 

“And what I have with David … it’s simple, and it’s good,” she says. “He makes me happy. He makes me  _ sure _ . I never — I never have to wonder what he’s thinking about me, never have to worry whether or not I’m  _ good _ enough, never have to worry that he’s going to disappear on me or talk to me like I’m a stupid kid or do whatever the  _ hell _ it is you’re doing to me right now.” 

 

His head is swimming, his thoughts too incoherent to grab even one of them to defend himself.

 

“It’s not like that,” he bleats. “I’m not just — you don’t even know how many times I’ve wanted to …” 

 

Her expression is flat and uncompromising. If he is going to convince her, now is not the time. If he is going to convince her, words alone won’t be enough. 

 

He knows what he has to do. He only hopes it isn’t too late to do it. 

 

“You knew how I felt about you,” she says. Only then is there the smallest of cracks in her exterior, the tiniest flicker of uncertainty. “It hurt me in a way I didn’t think I could still be hurt.” She shakes her head. “What I have with David — it doesn’t hurt,” she says, unconsciously pressing a hand to her chest, her eyes almost pleading with him to understand. “So I moved on.”  

 

The next few words are inevitable, terminal, like a slow motion bullet from a gun. 

 

“I suggest you do the same.” 

 

She stands at the door for a moment, and in her hesitation he thinks that maybe he has some sort of second chance, a tiny opening to redeem himself. But he realizes what she is doing a beat too late — she straightens her posture, blinks a few times, and smiles at the door before she flings it open, waving to David and then waving back to him with a grin so natural that if Ben didn’t know any better, their conversation might not have happened at all. 

 

* * *

 

The next morning he moves on autopilot. He doesn’t let himself think about Rey, who is already upstate, probably drinking tea out of one of David’s parents’ mugs. He doesn’t let himself think about Kathryn, who is probably squinting into a microscope or eating shitty hospital cafeteria food and hoping for a text from him to brighten her day. He doesn’t let himself think about Poe or Finn, whose friendships will most likely be casualties in the shitstorm of his own creation. He doesn’t let himself do anything but get up in the predawn hours and drive. 

 

His mother opens the door before he even knocks. He stands there dumbly, his backpack in his hands, registering how tiny she is in front of him but still feeling smaller than he ever has in his whole life. 

 

“I fucked up,” he says at once.  

 

His mother smiles in that rueful way of hers and shrugs at him. “You wanna come inside anyway?” 

 

In his imagination there was some build-up to this, some necessary small talk. They would spend the day running errands or watching television and only as he was just about to leave would he tell her a fraction of what was on his mind, hoping to glean some insight on how to handle it. Instead, an hour later he is three cups of coffee deep and has told her everything, all of it, the bad and the ugly and the parts he hasn’t even admitted to himself yet. 

 

His mother nods and doesn’t interrupt, her eyes heavy on his in the way they used to be when he was a teenager — only now it’s a comforting kind of weight. He tries not to think about how he took it for granted growing up as he plows through to the humiliating end. 

 

After a few beats his mother sighs and says, “Well, you know what the first thing you have to do is, at least.” 

 

He doesn’t want to make her say it, but he doesn’t want to say it, either. 

 

Her eyes are kind and a little rueful. “You need to get on the phone and break up with Kathryn.” 

 

At once he is shaking his head, his insides cold with dread. “I can’t just —  _ call _ her like that, and — ”

 

“Believe me,” says his mother, “going to San Francisco and doing it in person would be far more brutal at this point.” 

 

He stares into his empty mug. “Rey doesn’t even want to be with me,” he says. 

 

His mother shuts that down immediately. “Even if this Rey weren’t in the picture, it’s clear that this relationship with Kathryn was not built to last.” 

 

“How do you  _ know _ that?” he asks. He is not trying to be combative, but is genuinely curious, trying to see the situation through her eyes. “She’s a good person, she’s — we’re happy when we’re together, and really, we haven’t had any problems. I don’t even know how I can justify breaking up with her when everything is — it’s just, you know, it seems perfect,” he finishes lamely. 

 

His mother looks a little wistful. “You want to know how I know?” she asks. “It’s not in what you’re telling me about her. It’s the  _ way _ you tell me. Your voice. Your eyes.” The smile she gives him is almost apologetic, and he does not miss the way her eyes flicker toward the front door; it hasn’t even occurred to him to ask where his father has gallivanted off to this week. “When you talk about Rey, you sound stupid, Ben. You sound ridiculous.” 

 

“ _ Mom _ — ”

 

“You sound like somebody in love.” 

 

He gnaws at a now rather raw part of the inside of his cheek. “It doesn’t matter. It’s too late,” he says. “She made that clear.” 

 

To his surprise, his mother laughs. “Oh, Ben,” she says. “Trust me. This is just the beginning. If there really were such a thing as  _ too late _ , I guarantee you would not be standing here right now.” 

 

It takes Ben a moment to process that. “Ew,” he deadpans. 

 

His mother smirks. Then she takes their empty mugs and moves them toward the sink, lingering there for a moment thoughtfully. He feels strangely at ease, seeing her in this familiar place, staring out the window in that familiar way. It was rare that he ever saw his mother standing still, and maybe that’s why the memory of it feels sharper than the others — the rare moments that they were in the same place, that they listened and heard each other, that the world wasn’t demanding something from either of them in the periphery. 

 

“I know this is hard to hear,” says his mother, “but for now, I would leave Rey alone.” 

 

“What?” he asks, when really he means  _ How? _

 

“If she loves you like I think she does,” she says, “and if she is anything like the way you describe her — she needs to come back to you in her own way, in her own time.” 

 

Ben considers her words carefully. “And if she stays with David?” 

 

“Then she’ll be happy,” says his mother. “And if you really love her, that will have to be enough.” 

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WELP, thank you to those who alerted me that I posted the same chapter three times on the last update — I was more tired than I thought! But I am caught up on sleep and on life and on writing, #ReyloBless. Sorry this chapter took a bit to get out, it's a little longer than the others but I wanted to make sure to do the Leia convo justice. 
> 
> In any case, buckle your seat belts, because there will be some ~drastic changes~ in the next chapter. MWAHAHAHAHA. 
> 
> As always, thank you guys so much for giving me liiiiiiife — honest to god I was so tired last week that I genuinely at one point felt DRUNK at work, but your reviews and encouragement were the happy anchor I needed not to give my weird self away :).


	12. Chapter 12

**ONE YEAR LATER**

 

The voicemails on his phone are pathetic.

 

 _Hey, Ben. It’s — well, you know who it is. I haven’t heard from you in a few weeks. Call me back or I’m sending your father down, okay?_  

 

He heaves a sigh and makes a note to call his mother back.

 

_Yo, Ben, it’s Finn! Where the hell have you been? It’s finally nice enough to go camping again, we were thinking in that old spot up by the lake, where —_

 

Delete. Ben puts his head in his hands and takes a breath. He’s just tired, is all. He’ll call Finn back tomorrow and they’ll arrange all the details and he’ll go camping with Poe and Finn and pretend that he is not the incredibly awkward third wheel that he is, even when he hears the sound of them not-so-subtly making out just outside of the tent.

 

He looks miserably around the on call room and is thankful that, at the very least, he gets to go home in an hour. He’ll conk out for the next twelve and feel better in the morning. He usually feels better in the morning.

 

And then another notification pops up — somehow he must have just missed a call from Poe. It’s rare that Poe actually calls — Poe texts like a normal human, unlike Finn, whose sense of social convention in the digital age is shaky at best — so Ben feels an unconscious shiver when he sees that he left a voicemail instead of a text.

 

“Ben, it’s Poe.” His voice is clipped in a way Ben recognizes, that same voice he used when Rey and Finn raced each other of a sixty foot tall tree and almost toppled off on a hike, that same voice he used when he was ordering Plutt out of the coffee shop. “Everybody’s okay, but we’re at the hospital. Finn got into a fender bender. He’ll be fine, just a broken arm, but I thought I’d check if you were here before he gets discharged.”

 

Ben’s up from the locker room bench before Poe’s voice even finishes saying _everybody’s okay_ , because he knows that nothing good is going to follow that qualifier. He stalks down to the second floor, furious that nobody bothered to come get him before now. Anyone who would have treated Finn in this overly-caffeinated hellhole knows that they’re friends. He has to remind himself to keep his face in check when he finally reaches the wing where he’s pretty sure they will be — and sure enough, there’s Finn, sitting on the edge of an exam table and waving jovially with his uninjured arm. Poe smiles at him wearily in acknowledgement.

 

“What happened?” Ben asks at once, scowling at Finn’s cast, grabbing at his chart.

 

Finn opens his mouth, but Poe answers for him.

 

“Some _stupid_ kid was texting and blew right through a red light.”

 

“He’s fine too,” says Finn amiably. “He was really sorry about it.”

 

“He _should_ be,” says Poe. “And you’re not _fine_ , by the way.”

 

“He said he’ll never do it again!”

 

Ben looks down at him past the chart warningly. Finn grins a little more effusively than usual, and Ben doesn’t have to look at his chart to know that he’s on a decent amount of drugs right now. The break, at least, isn’t too terrible. He’ll probably be out of the cast in a month. He wants to say it out loud, mostly out of habit to assure himself, but he’s sure by now the two of them have been talked up the wall by whichever doctor dealt with them first.

 

“So I guess I have to get hit by a car now to get you to hang with me, huh?”

 

Ben feels an immediate pang of guilt, but Finn is smirking at him.

 

“ _Not_ funny,” Poe grumbles.

 

“Sorry,” Ben mumbles. “I’ve been busy.”

 

He doesn’t bother glancing over at Poe, who is no doubt casting him one of those knowing looks again. Now that it’s mingled with an indefinable kind of pity, it is somehow irritating in a way that it wasn’t before.

 

“Nah, I’m just giving you a hard time,” says Finn. He cringes a little bit down at his cast. “Although we might want to take a raincheck on that whole camping thing — ”

 

“ _Shit_ , I got here as soon as I could — ”

 

It feels as if someone has replaced his blood with ice water.

 

“Oh my god, Finn, your arm, are you okay?”

 

There she is, like some kind of apparition: Rey, hovering uncertainly over Finn like she wants to crush him in her arms but is also afraid to touch him, her cheeks red and her eyes wide and her hair cut into this sweet little face-framing bob that would make him do a double-take if he weren’t already so floored by her presence.

 

Finn opens his mouth to answer, but apparently not fast enough, because in the next instant she is turning to Poe: “Is he okay? What the hell _happened?_ How bad is the break? Can he — ”

 

“Hey, I’m sitting right _here_ ,” Finn protests with a laugh. “Rey, seriously, I’m fine. I told you not to call her,” he says with a pointed look at Poe.

 

“How could he _not call me_ about something like this?” Rey demands. Her voice is brimming a little hysterically, her hands gesturing with a tightness as if they are trapped in some small space around her. She whips around to face Poe. “How long has — ”

 

Rey’s eyes connect with his, and the impact of it is unlike any force of nature he could imagine. It cuts through him so cleanly, so thoroughly, the first few shuddering moments of it seeming to last forever as she takes him in, as the recognition winces in her eyes, as she finally stops dead on her feet and gapes back at him as dumbly as he is gaping at her.

 

“Ben,” she manages, a little breathlessly.  

 

Poe raises a sheepish hand to the back of his neck and looks away. Finn just keeps grinning the trademark patient-on-heavy-painkillers grin. He suddenly hates them both for not cutting in on this excruciating moment, for not doing anything to ease the tension of it.

 

His voice is more abrupt than he means it to be. “Hey.”

 

It’s been a year since the last time he saw her, but looking at her now she seems to flicker in and out of recognition, one part Rey, another part stranger. It’s not just her short hair. It’s the way she holds herself, with a little more height, a little more grace. It’s the fit of her clothes, the dark jeans and the button-up blouse tailored nicely to her in a way those fun, ill-fitting dresses and ripped up pants never did. Even in her panic, she is starkly well-composed, all put together. It is as if she has filled in all the missing puzzle pieces of herself, and now that he is seeing the end result, it hasn’t formed the picture he thought it would.  

 

And he … he has no idea what he looks like to her. Right now he wishes he were invisible.

 

“How are you?” Rey asks, recovering faster than he does. But now it’s an insult. Those three words are so insufficient, so lacking, so unworthy of the god damn _year_ the two of them have been apart.

 

“I’m fine,” he says. This time the abruptness is intentional. The silence is so overwhelming that he can’t help but fill it up, even though what he wants more than anything right now is to leave. “And you?”

 

“Fine,” Rey answers politely.

Finn snorts. Ben is at first relieved at the idea of someone else taking control of this sad excuse for a conversation, until he actually opens his mouth.

 

“Fine?” says Finn, with a dazed grin. “She’s more than _fine_ , she’s getting _married!_ ”

 

“Finn,” says Poe lowly. Rey is staring at Finn’s feet.

 

Ben wills his eyes not to, but they are drawn to her left hand as if they are captive, under someone else’s control. She is already unconsciously folding her hands together, but not before he sees it — an engagement ring. It is small, a simple diamond, and somehow so well-suited to her and her whole new ensemble that for a terrible moment, it all makes sense. She has never seemed more at ease with herself, with this chameleon she has become. And this is what he thought would happen, isn’t it? What he was bracing himself for, what he forced himself to imagine every time he came too close?

 

“You’re engaged.”

 

It doesn’t come out like a question, because, as usual, he didn’t mean for it to come out at all.

 

She looks up at him with a neutral expression. “I am,” she says.

 

Ben looks over and Poe and Finn, who are conveniently not meeting his eye.

 

 _Congratulations_ . That’s all he has to say. _Congratulations_ , and then he turns around and goes, tells them that they need him up on the third floor, shuts the door behind him and retains whatever the hell is left of his pride.

 

He opens his mouth. “You haven’t even _graduated_ ,” is what comes out instead.

 

She scowls, and it’s almost a relief to recognize some part of her again. “I have, actually,” she says. “Just last week. I took remote classes and finished a year early.”

 

This is somehow every bit as infuriating as the engagement.

 

“You didn’t tell me,” he says, sounding like a child.

 

Rey’s answer is simple and cutting: “You didn’t ask.”

 

The door opens. Ben doesn’t turn around, even when he hears Hux behind him.

 

“Rey,” says Hux, surprised. “Were you and David already in town?”

 

“No,” she says, taking a breath and smiling weakly at Hux past Ben’s head. “Poe called me as soon as it happened, I just drove down. Thank you for taking care of him.”

 

Her eyes linger back on Finn, and Ben feels more foolish than ever. Not only were his first words to her in a year to pick a fight, but they’re in the midst of an actual emergency — or at least, the aftermath of one. Finn almost got murdered today and he’s all stirred up because of what? Some dumb engagement? A graduation?

 

He needs to get a goddamn grip. The truth is that he and Rey were friends for a few months, and messy friends at best. The truth is that she hurt his pride, and the anger simmering under his bones is nothing more than that.

 

“I’m glad he’s alright,” says Hux.

 

“You could have told me he was here,” Ben mutters at him. If he can’t be angry at Rey, he can sure as hell be angry at Hux.

 

Hux only raises an eyebrow at him. “I’ve actually just come to discharge you,” he says, turning back to Finn.

 

“I’ve got to call David and let him know I’m here.” The words are quiet and directed at Poe, but Ben hears them anyway. Rey offers him the barest of smiles as she weaves her way out of the room, somehow seeming smaller, more contained than he ever remembers her being. And then she’s gone again, as suddenly as she appeared.

 

Ben remembers a time that he might have been stupid enough to follow her. Now he’ll just have to settle for seeing her next year instead.

 

* * *

 

It isn’t another year, though. It’s another day, and it’s entirely soon.

 

Ben doesn’t sleep the night he sees Rey again. Every time he closes his eyes he sees that damn ring. Every time he moves in his sheets he is reliving every humiliating detail of that last conversation they had before she went upstate with David, before she fell in love with his hometown and decided to _stay_.

 

He watches the light shift into his room as the sun rises into morning and is thankful that he doesn’t have work today. Instead of using the time to do anything productive, he heads down to a bar in the kitschy historic district of town, because somehow drinking alone in the middle of the day seems a little less pathetic if hipsters are serving it on an outdoor patio.

 

But he isn’t alone. There’s a girl at the bar in a pair of jeans and a blouse that he recognizes.

 

“Rey?”

 

She flinches and turns to the sound of his voice, the sunlight catching her short hair like a halo. “Ben,” she says.

 

He sits down at her table without asking permission. The place is practically evacuated — all the students are gone for the semester, and it’s barely even noon.

 

“You’re … drinking,” he says, staring at the half-finished beer in front of her, and the empty one next to that.

 

She shifts her weight uncomfortably in her chair. “I turned 21 last week.”

 

“You know that’s not what I meant, Rey.”

 

She purses her lips. It is usually so easy to read her that he takes it for granted, but now with her eyes obscured by a pair of sunglasses, he finds himself at a loss. Just like that he finds himself falling into old, infuriatingly familiar patterns; just like that he finds that his anger is giving way to an uneasiness that could only be the fault of Rey.

 

“I used to drink because I was unhappy,” she says. “But I’m not unhappy anymore.”

 

He nods, not meaning for the little laugh that follows to sound as bitter as it does. “Right.”

 

He doesn’t move, and neither does she. She takes a sip of her beer and stares at him through the her dark lenses, and he stares back, feeling oddly disconnected from this, as if they are in a play and have both forgotten their lines.

 

“Are you meeting someone here?” she asks, an edge of impatience in her voice.

 

“No,” he says flatly. “Are you?”

 

“No.”

 

He orders a beer. They don’t talk again until the waitress brings it to him, and he holds up his bottle.

 

“To your … marriage,” he says.

 

She grits her teeth. “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Ben. Whatever you want to say, just get it over with, will you?”

 

Ben laughs, and takes a few indulgent sips, the beer burning in the back of his throat. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, fine. What the _hell_ are you doing, Rey?”

 

She scowls. “That’s hardly a — ”

 

“What’s the _plan?_ ” he elaborates. “I mean, Jesus, Rey. You went upstate without a goddamn word, quit your job, quit this town, left your closest friends — your _family_ — behind, and now you’re getting _married?_ For fuck’s sake, you can’t even rent a damn _car_.”

 

Rey is entirely unmoved. “Are you done?” she asks.

 

“No,” he says. He feels a sudden unexpected boldness and he tells himself that it’s because he doesn’t care about her anymore, not in that way that he used to, but he cares about the _potential_ she is throwing away. “What about med school, Rey? What about all that time we spent studying, what about all the plans you made?”

 

Her jaw clenches, and there is something gratifying about it, that something he says still has the ability to get through to her. It’s her answer, though, that really gives her away. It sounds rehearsed, as if she has been here before in her mind, justifying this very thing to him.

 

“I’m really great with the horses,” she says. “I have a steady job at a ranch, and I help with the riding lessons. I’m going to take a few over myself in a few months.”

 

He hates every word that is coming out of her mouth, but is glad to hear that old defiance, glad that there is something still fundamentally _Rey_ about this girl sitting in front of him. And so he goes on, pressing into this bruise of a conversation, waiting to rile her.

 

“That’s all well and good, but what about when that’s over?” says Ben. “What about when you get bored, and remember that you worked too hard, and you’re too smart, and too driven to _settle_ for — ”

 

“That’s enough,” she says, standing so abruptly that the metal chair shrieks on the cement. She opens her purse and rifles through it for some cash, then props it under a potted plant on the table.

 

“Shit,” says Ben, grabbing money out of his own pocket to pay for his mostly untouched beer. “Shit, Rey, hold on.”

 

She’s already off the patio and on the sidewalk.

 

“I just don’t want you to do something you’d regret — ”

 

“How _selfless_ of you,” she mutters. Her cheeks are flushed, her arms rigid at her side and clutching to her shoulder bag. She ducks her head down as she says to her retreating feet, “You’ve got to stop trying to _fix_ me. You’ve been doing it since the day we met, and I — I’m never going to be enough for you, am I?”

 

The words nearly knock the wind out of him.

 

“Where the _hell_ do you get off, saying that?” says Ben. “How could you — Jesus, Rey,” he says, all semblance of composure lost. He doesn’t care about his pride, doesn’t care about the old couple staring at them from a bench, doesn’t care that he is on the verge of making a fool of himself in front of her all over again. His voice is low, urgent, desperate. “I _told_ you how I felt. I broke up with Kathryn for you, and you never even — ”

 

“Oh, did you?” says Rey blackly, her throat thick. She stops walking and turns to face him, pulling the sunglasses away from her eyes. They are red-rimmed and bloodshot; she was crying before he even showed up.

 

“I — I did,” he says, taken aback at the sight of her. “Rey …”

 

She shakes her head, backing away from a hand he didn’t even realize he extended.

 

“I came back here, you know,” she says. “About a week after I heard.”

 

“You did?”

 

She nods, casting her eyes away from him, toward the empty road. “I came to your apartment,” she says, so quietly it turns into a whisper. With a sickening lurch, he knows what she is about to say in the split second before she says it: “And I _saw you_. Through the window. With — some girl from my biochem class.”

 

“No,” says Ben dumbly. Not because it didn’t happen, but because he can’t believe that _this_ is happening right now. Because he can’t believe that in his weakest moment, the day he decided to himself that Rey was never going to return and that _nothing even mattered_ , she was there. She saw everything, and he lost everything, without even knowing there was anything left to lose.

 

“Oh, yes,” she says darkly. “Whatever _love_ you felt for me back then, you got over it awfully quick.”

 

“That didn’t mean anything,” says Ben, running a hand through his hair, feeling his fingers shake as they skim his scalp. “I was — I was drunk, I was out of my _mind_ , I thought you’d never … I hadn’t heard from you, and I just … I swear to god, Rey, I swear. It wasn’t _like_ that. And — and _you’re_ the one who just up and left, without a word,” he says, in a desperate bid to turn the tables on her. “You’re the one who _disappeared_ on me.”

 

She’s shaking her head at him. “You’re the one who let me.”

 

He can’t help himself this time, and he finds himself grabbing her arm, stalling her motion. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asks.

 

“I called you,” she says. “I texted you.”

 

 _No, no, no._ “About stupid things,” he reminds her, remembering the texts that had come a few months after that. “You were — Jesus, Rey, you’d broken my heart. I wasn’t going to sit around and talk about _farm animals_ with you — ”

 

She pulls her arm away and takes a step back. “That’s not why I was texting you,” she says lowly. “And if you weren’t such a stubborn _jerk_ you might have figured it out.”

 

Before he can respond, she is shaking her head again. “But that doesn’t matter anymore.” Her voice is steely, in control. “I’m happy. You’ve moved on. It’s — it’s not even worth fighting about.”

 

The word sticks to the roof of his mouth, practically choking him. “Right.”

 

Her eyes hold his for a beat too long. “Right,” she echoes quietly. She holds out her hand. “It’s, uh — it’s been good to see you.”

 

He shakes her hand wordlessly, even though the gesture is ridiculous. And then she’s turning away again, to walk down the street, and down another street, and out of his life. He won’t be invited to the wedding. He won’t get Christmas cards in the mail. He won’t even be able to eke anything out of Finn and Poe.

 

“Wait,” he says.

 

She stops a little too quickly, like she was anticipating it. “Yeah?”

 

He opens his mouth dumbly. “Can we — can we at least be friends again?”

 

If he isn’t mistaken, the briefest of shadows flickers across her face. She is going to say no, and he’s prepared for that. He doesn’t even know why he’s asking. Even as the words come out of his mouth, he knows he is damning himself all over again.

 

“Yeah,” she says quietly. “We can.”

 

He doesn’t know why he feels so relieved. He doesn’t know exactly what _friends_ means to them anymore, but it can’t mean anything good.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ummmm so maybe this isn't a Coffeeshop AU anymore. Don't LOOK at me I am fan fiction trash. As always, thank you and #bless you for your amazingly supportive comments, I am constantly blown away by how tight our little subfandom is. May the Force (and this glorious weekend) be with you, y'all.


	13. Chapter 13

Ben is sure the whole “friends” thing will be just a formality. He has some distinct memory of the first time they assured each other they were just friends — Rey, 19 and bug-eyed, sitting in the passenger seat of his car and begging off the conversation he’d overheard in the parking lot with Finn — and how awkward it was after that. How they didn’t talk to each other for a solid week, and might never have if she hadn’t happened to publicly concuss herself in front of his car. He cringes at the thought of it. 

 

No, it won’t be like that this time. Because Rey will go back upstate to David, who will be starting his second year of residency at some hospital up there he never bothered to learn the name of. She’ll be busy with her riding lessons and the wedding plans and might halfheartedly text him a few times before the whole thing dies out again. But at least they aren’t angry with each other anymore. That’s really all Ben can ask for. 

 

It turns out he gets a lot more than he asked for when he shows up to the coffee shop the next day. 

 

For a moment he is certain he is hallucinating, or that one of those dumb sci fi novels he read as a kid about falling into time portals has come to life — because there is Rey, standing in front of the register in her purple Jakku Java hat and apron, as if no time has passed at all. 

 

“Doctor Ben,” she says wryly, a callback to their earlier interactions. He thinks about how unabashedly excited she was to see him in those days and feels a little pang.  

 

“What are you doing here?” he asks. 

 

She doesn’t look exactly the same, now that he’s up close. Her khakis are a little baggier on her now. Her hair is too short to be pulled into that old ponytail. But her smile is still bright, if not a little ironic, and he feels an odd rush of gratitude that this is a pattern they can still fall into, even after all this time. 

 

“Finn’s out for the count because of his arm, and I’m a sucker,” says Rey. 

 

“A lifesaver!” Poe corrects her from the back office. 

 

“Yeah, yeah,” says Rey. “I’ll be expecting a massive raise,  _ boss _ .” 

 

Poe pokes his head out. “You can have a free scone on your break.” 

 

“Gee whiz,” Rey deadpans, before turning back to Ben. “Are you still a medium espresso man or have you experienced some kind of drastic caffeinated awakening since the last time I worked here?” 

 

“I, uh.” He wants to think of something witty, wants to match her banter, wants to be every bit as blissfully  _ normal _ as she is being right now. “Yeah, still the same old,” he says lamely. 

 

Rey salutes him. “Coming right up.” 

 

He hovers by the counter as she gets to work on it, trying not to stare too hard even though it’s  _ so weird _ seeing her again, like he could blink away all of his fuckups and start fresh. He can almost feel the particles in the room reassembling, picking up where they left off, swallowing up everything that has happened in the past year. He can’t decide if it’s a relief. It’s all happening too fast. 

 

“What about your job at the ranch?” he asks, keeping his tone neutral. 

 

“Well, there’s a month before riding lessons start,” she says, “so I was just going to be fixing cars and junk anyway. But this is steady and Poe needs the extra hand, so …” She shrugs, handing him the espresso. “Plus those losers never bothered to sublet my room.” 

 

“Because your room is a damn closet,” Poe reminds her, coming out from the office. 

 

“Don’t lie,” says Rey with a grin. “You guys kept it as a shrine to me.” 

 

Poe roughs up the hat on her head. “Ah, yes. We ritualistically wept before the altar of your horrendous knick knacks and car manuals every night.” 

 

She nudges him in the side. “Shucks, you really did miss me.” 

 

“We did,” says Poe seriously. 

 

She sticks her tongue out at him, and Ben stands there a little dumbfounded, willing himself not to ask the question that is practically screaming from every corner of the room:  _ What about David? _ All it takes is a quick glance to see that her engagement ring is still securely on her finger. He supposes it’s only a month away, not that long in the grand scheme of things. But he also knows from some ill-advised Facebook stalking that the wedding is supposed to be in two months. 

 

“So how’s work?” Rey asks. 

 

“Boring,” he says. 

 

Rey raises her brows at him. “ _ Boring? _ ” 

 

“Without you antagonizing all the local teenagers, the ER is pretty empty these days.” 

 

He took a chance on the joke, and is gratified by her immediate laugh. He’s forgotten that sound, so brash and uninhibited, nothing pretty about it but so infectious that it’s impossible not to smile back. 

 

“So I’ll, uh — I’ll see you around, then?” he asks before he heads back to the hospital. 

 

Rey’s smile is a little rueful, a little older. “I suppose you will.”

 

* * *

 

At first it is easy to ignore the ache in his chest when Ben is overwhelmed by the return of everything else. It was a short few weeks last year when the four of them were a group like this — Finn, Poe, Ben, and Rey, going on hikes, grabbing smoothies, doing shit friends did like coming with them to the laundromat or texting each other pictures of dumb bumper stickers — but Ben does not fully appreciate just how much he missed it until it is happening again. As good of friends as he is with Finn and Poe, there is no mistaking the element of Rey, the natural glue that holds them all together. When she is around the silence is never awkward, the day doesn’t demand any kind of plan, and they all feel a quiet easiness that Ben didn’t even realize they’d been missing since she left. 

 

But after a week or so, he can’t ignore the rest of it. She’ll swipe some hair back behind her ear and the ring will gleam back at him. Finn will make some quip about whether he and the rest of her “bridesdudes” should wear matching corsages. And sometimes, when Rey thinks nobody is watching, there is a tiredness in her eyes, and a weariness in her posture that reminds him of that afternoon he found her at the bar, of two beers and the redness in her eyes. 

 

He doesn’t say anything. Whatever friendship they have is fragile as it is, and besides — she’s living with Finn and Poe now. If anything were wrong, they’d notice. They’d take care of her. 

 

* * *

 

“Oh,  _ goodness _ , Rey!” 

 

Ben looks up from his coffee one rainy June morning to find an impeccably-dressed woman stalking over to the register, clucking at Rey, whose expression is oscillating between stunned and bemused. There isn’t a line, but Ben has a feeling from the way the woman has busted in that she wouldn’t have paid it any heed if there were. 

 

“David told me he met you in a coffee shop, dear, but  _ this _ is just — ” She looks around and shudders a bit. “What was all the fuss about getting your degree for if you were going to do  _ this? _ ” 

 

“Mrs. Price,” says Rey, with the exasperated, patient smile of someone who has dealt with this a hundred times before. “What brings you all the way out here?” 

 

It finally registers in Ben’s still-not-quite-awake brain that this must be David’s mother. He can see some of the resemblance now, in her face if not in her attitude. She seems as high strung as her son is laid-back, and he learns quickly that her bluntness could give Rey a run for her money. 

 

“Well, to hunt  _ you _ down, of course,” says Mrs. Price reproachfully. “You’re hardly acting like a girl who has a wedding to plan — oh, and  _ look _ at you,” she says, her eyes trailing Rey up and down as she gets closer, “as if cutting all that beautiful hair wasn’t enough, now we’re going to have to get the dress refitted? I admire your discipline, but dear, you’re going to look simply  _ ghastly _ if you lose another ounce — ”

 

“Ooookay,” says Rey, over the sound of Mrs. Price’s shrill voice. “How about we talk about this when I’m on break? Are you going to be around in an hour?” 

 

Mrs. Price settles her hands on her hips. “Why, I drive  _ all this way _ to help you with this wedding, and  _ this _ is the welcome I get?” 

 

“Er,” says Rey, waffling for a moment before tentatively reaching out to hug her. 

 

But this is evidently not the welcome Mrs. Price was looking for either, because she has already whipped out her phone and is furiously typing with her pointer finger the way Ben has only seen adults over the age of 50 do. She thrusts the screen into Rey’s face. 

 

“Playtime is over, dear, you’ve got a wedding to plan,” she says. “I’ve arranged our appointments today, there’s a cake tasting at 1, a fitting at 2:30, and I called in a favor to get the caterer to take us at 4 so I’ll have time to drive home tonight — ”

 

“Whoa,” says Rey, holding her hands up. “I, uh — I really appreciate it, Mrs. Price, but I have to work today. Remember I told you about my friend, with the broken arm — ?”

 

“I’m sure Fred can handle a silly  _ register _ with one arm — ”

 

Rey catches Ben’s look of utter horror out of the corner of her eye and bites down a laugh. “ _ Finn _ is barely off vicodin, actually.” 

 

“What am I supposed to do, then?” asks Mrs. Price, aghast. “Go to all these appointments  _ alone? _ Really, Rey, with the amount of interest you’re taking in this wedding, I’m starting to think that — ”

 

“Mrs. Price,” says Rey, the smile wavering her face, “really, I’d love to, I just — ”

 

“Don’t worry about it, sweetheart,” says Poe, poking his head out of the office. “I just called Jessika, she says she’s good to pick up a shift. You can head out when she gets here, okay?” 

 

Mrs. Price claps her hands together and is all smiles in an instant, so quickly that Ben gets whiplash just from staring at the side of her face. “Perfect,” she says, not even bothering to look over at Poe or wait for Rey’s response. “I’ll be here to pick you up in a half an hour. Make sure you change out of  … whatever this is first.” 

 

Rey thanks her, waves, and waits until the door jingles behind her before turning to Poe and saying, “I thought you were my  _ friend _ .” 

 

Poe shrugs. “She’s a terror, but she’s right. You’ve got to get this done eventually.” Before Rey can protest, he says, “You haven’t even sent out invitations yet. And Rey, I could decide to be  _ very busy _ that weekend — ”

 

“You wouldn’t dare,” she laughs. 

 

“You haven’t sent out invitations?” 

 

Rey freezes at the sound of Ben’s voice, as if she has very much forgotten that he was sitting there. Of all the stupid things Ben could say, he isn’t sure why he picked that one — until it occurs to him that if she hasn’t sent out invitations yet, that might mean he is invited after all. That might mean that he has to sit in some dumb little chapel, and endure horrible small talk, and eat shitty appetizers while Rey whizzes around like a vision on David’s arm. 

 

And then, the more sinister thought — if the invitations haven’t been sent out, maybe it won’t happen at all. 

 

“No,” says Rey, “there was a typo on the first one and David’s mom had a cow.” 

 

“Oh,” says Ben. He clears his throat. “She’s, uh …” 

 

To his surprise, Rey smirks. “Just say it.” 

 

He blows out a breath. “That was like watching a car accident.” 

 

She and Poe both laugh, and Poe nudges her. “Good thing Rey’s buckled her seatbelt.” 

 

* * *

 

They laugh it off in the coffee shop, but later that night the encounter gnaws at him. The way Rey, usually so gutsy and opinionated, rolled over so easily for David’s mother. The implication that Rey’s heart really isn’t in this wedding, allowing some fragile thread of hope to lace its way into his veins. And how when Rey was leaving and he looked at her, really looked at her, he saw that Mrs. Price was right — Rey looked different. Scrawny in the places she was lanky before, fragile where she was fleeting. 

 

The invitation comes in the mail two days later, and the shock of that eclipses just about everything else. 

 

The next morning his car won’t start, but it’s a nice day, so he decides to walk. There’s this strange haze to everything now, like reality isn’t really hitting him, but blowing over him in waves. He hasn’t opened the invitation. It’s sitting propped up on his toaster, his name written in loopy handwriting on ivory cardstock. He’s not exactly sure why he can’t just bring himself to open it — the damage is already done. 

 

_ Are you going to the wedding?  _

 

The text from Kathryn comes in when he’s about halfway to the hospital. She have just gotten off the graveyard shift in San Francisco if she’s texting him right now. 

 

_ Probably _ , he writes back. It seems too curt, so he adds,  _ You? _

 

_ It’s too short notice for me to get off :(.  _

 

He sighs and puts his phone in his pocket. 

 

As messy as the breakup with Kathryn was a year ago, it ultimately ended up being for the best; she stayed on after her fellowship, and is dating another guy in San Francisco now, some guy who doesn’t do stupid things like borderline stalk baristas and self-sabotage every time he opens his mouth. Ben didn’t think they’d be friends after it all went down, but after a few weeks they fell into a cordial enough rhythm, occasionally emailing or texting or commenting on each other’s pictures. It is his first experience with a breakup that hasn’t blow up in his face. It’s kind of nice. 

 

His phone vibrates again, and he sees another message from Kathryn, one that she must have taken some care before sending. 

 

_ Is everything alright with Rey? It just seems like short notice, is all. And she seems a little off over email _ . 

 

Ah. For all of this long-distance friendship they’ve maintained, the one thing Ben hasn’t told Kathryn was just how completely and utterly cut off he has been from Rey up until now. 

 

His answer is thoughtless, a knee jerk reaction. 

 

_ She seems fine _ , he writes back. It doesn’t matter whether he believes it or not. Rey made it very clear that it wasn’t his business anymore. 

 

* * *

 

When he gets back that evening the hood to his car is popped open. His brain doesn’t even consider any possibility other than it being Rey crouching behind it; sure enough, there she is, so focused on her work that she doesn’t even notice him approaching until his shadow is over her. 

 

She startles a bit, but grins with unexpected broadness when she sees him standing there. “Just about done,” she says, all flushed cheeks and loose hair in the summer breeze. 

 

“Uh …” 

 

Rey’s nimble fingers are fiddling with the gears again. “Poe mentioned your car wasn’t starting,” she says. There’s grease smeared under her chin. “Why didn’t you call me in the first place?” 

 

“I didn’t even think to,” he says, still a little too thrown to fully react to her. 

 

“Well, it didn’t start a few minutes ago, but I reckon it will in a second.” She takes a long swig from a gatorade bottle and wipes her mouth with her bare arm before squinting back into the car’s hood. 

 

“Didn’t start?” Ben asks. “Where did you get the keys?” 

 

Her eyes glint at him. “I didn’t.” 

 

It takes him a second to understand what she’s implying. “Jesus, Rey,” he says, half-exasperated, half-impressed. “I mean … thanks?” 

 

She shrugs. “I had nothing better to do.” 

 

“What do I owe you?” he asks. 

 

“Ha!” She’s smirking at him, a little bolder than usual. He finds himself smirking back. “Grab me a glass of water and we’ll call it even.” 

 

He salutes her, suddenly relieved to have an excuse to enter the apartment without her. He figures it’s only a matter of time before she brings up the fact that he hasn’t RSVP’d to the wedding yet, and if she sees it sitting there pathetically on the toaster it will only make it more awkward than it’s already bound to be. He stashes it away quickly, shoving it into a drawer with all the baking supplies his mother bought him in college that he has used maybe twice since acquiring them. He doesn’t linger, grabbing the glass of water and leaving the apartment before he gets too far into his own head. 

 

When he walks back out he can hear her phone ringing from her bag. She glances over at the bag, and then down at the grease at her hands. 

 

“Want me to grab it?” he asks. 

 

“Nah, it’s probably just Finn. He’s bored at home,” she says. “I’ll call him back when I clean up.” 

 

“I don’t mind,” says Ben, reaching into the open backpack to grab it. 

 

“No, Ben, wait — ”

 

He sees the unexpected spasm of panic in her expression just as his hand collides with something cool and glass in the backpack. He glances down, but in some grim way he already knows what it is; in some grim way he has suspected something of the sort ever since Rey came back home, so differently wound, so flimsy, so easily swayed. 

 

But he doesn’t pull out the phone, or the bottle of liquor he skimmed with his fingertips. He stands up wordlessly, staring at her. 

 

“Ben.” 

 

She says his name like she has forgotten how to say it. He doesn’t answer her, closing the distance between them so quickly that he can still see the ghost of the smile that was on her face mere seconds before. 

 

Her voice is low and warning: “Ben, it’s not what it —  _ hey! _ ” 

 

He grabs the gatorade bottle from the top of the car, his suspicions confirmed by the way she scrambles for it before he even pulls open the cap. She keeps reaching for it, but he turns too quickly and has too much height on her. He holds it up to his mouth, takes a sip — it tastes sharp and blue and burns down his throat. 

 

“For fuck’s sake,” he says.

 

Rey’s not even looking at him anymore, her back turned to him by the time he turns back around. He holds the bottle upside down and lets what is left of it spill out onto the pavement, and she flinches at the sound of it. 

 

“What is this, Rey?” he asks.  

 

“Nothing,” she mutters, the word quiet and steely. 

 

“Nothing?” he demands. He turns and stalks back over to where the backpack is perched at the back of his car, and wrenches out the liquor bottle. It’s more than half-empty. “Nothing. Okay, then.” He pulls the cap off that and pours it out on the sidewalk. 

 

He can hear Rey hiss out a breath between her teeth. 

 

“Well?” he prompts. He tries to soften his voice, tries to react to this the way he knows he should, but he’s  _ angry _ . Angry at Rey for keeping secrets, angry at Finn and Poe for not noticing this happening, angry at himself for deliberately ignoring it when he has  _ known _ something was wrong since the day he saw her at the bar. 

 

“You’re making a scene,” she says.

 

He shakes his head, even though he knows she’s right. “You’re making a  _ mistake _ ,” says Ben. 

 

At that she finally whips around to face him. In the evening light her eyes are hard, her face hollow. She finally raising her voice to match his, the words seeming to throw themselves from her: “Marrying David is  _ not _ a mistake!” 

 

Ben stares back at her, the bottle still clutched in his hands. “Jesus, Rey,” he mutters, feeling suddenly unsteady. “I was talking about the drinking. You came up with that one all on your own.” 

 

He should feel smug. He should feel gratified. He should lean into that selfish part of him that wants to think he knew this was inevitable, that this was bound to fall to pieces from the start — but he can’t. As her eyes widen slightly and she takes a step back from him, looking horrified with herself, all he wants is for none of it to be true. All he wants is to be wrong. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> YOU GUYS are the best and I love you to pieces and I tried for the sake of all of our sanity to put some cuteness in here before I went ahead and ripped us all to shreds again. I'm in a dorky community theater show this weekend, but I will try my best to hustle with the next update as soon as we're finished with the mayhem!! BLESS ALL YOUR FACES.


	14. Chapter 14

The sun is starting to set. Any moment now his neighbors will start coming home from work, filling up the empty parking spots they’re standing on, wondering why on earth they are standing in this silent stalemate. Ben is not sure who is on the offense and who is on the defense here, the both of them so upset with the themselves that the battle is more internal than it really is with each other. 

 

“I’m sorry,” says Rey after a few moments. 

 

He isn’t sure what in particular she’s sorry for, but she doesn’t seem all that sure, either. 

 

Ben shakes his head, his voice softening, the thrumming of his heart in his head starting to steady itself. “No,” he says. “I am. I shouldn’t have …” 

 

She clears her throat, her eyes a little foggy. “Well, um,” she says, “I got the car to start while you were inside, so you should be all good to go.” 

 

“Right,” he says. 

 

He should say something. He should say  _ anything _ , all of the infinite things that are screaming between his ears.

 

_ You’ve got to stop trying to fix me _ , she’d said to him. He realizes now why the words had surprised him. He had always considered himself the broken one — the one who said the wrong things at the wrong time, the one who didn’t know how to hold on to the things he loved, the one who spent the better part of his life pushing, pushing, pushing people away. 

 

But the truth is, whether she likes it or not, Rey is the broken one now. She is unraveling at the seams, and if nobody else will help her …

 

“Do Finn and Poe know?” 

 

Rey purses her lips guiltily. “No,” she says. 

 

He supposes it makes sense. Finn is still half-drugged from the arm break, and Poe must be working double-time between the shop and taking care of him. Ben doesn’t bother to ask whether or not David knows. 

 

“Are you working tomorrow?” 

 

Her brows knit. “No,” she says warily. 

 

He considers this for a moment. “Get in the car,” he tells her. 

 

“What?” 

 

“Get in,” he says, cocking his head toward the passenger seat. 

 

Rey blows out an uncertain breath. “Why?” 

 

“We’re going upstate.” 

 

Rey shudders and takes a step back. “You can’t — no, I don’t want to see him like this,” says Rey, her eyes already flitting toward the sidewalk on the other end of the street. 

 

Ben has to actively keep himself from scoffing. “No, we’re not going to David’s,” he says. 

 

“Then where — ”

 

“I’m going into the apartment to grab some things,” he says. “You can wait in the passenger seat, or you can leave. It’s up to you.” 

 

He takes a few steps toward his door and sees her in his periphery, her weight shifting from one foot to the other as if she is making a different decision every other second. He steels himself and walks into the apartment, feeling an odd sense of resolve for the entirely insane thing he is about to do. He grabs a box of crackers, a water bottle, a few clothes and his phone charger. When he walks out he knows exactly where she will be, and is oddly gratified that he knows her well enough to be sure — because there she is, rooted in the exact same spot, both resistant and desperate at the same time. 

 

“I don’t want to fix you, Rey,” he says, knowing exactly what she is thinking. “I want to help you.” 

 

She shudders a bit at that, but there is something relenting in it, as if she is leaning into his words.

 

“I won’t tell Finn or Poe or anyone else,” he says. “Just come with me.” 

 

It takes a few seconds, but again, he already knows she will nod. Already knows that she will cave into herself the slightest bit, and walk toward the passenger seat of his car. All the things that were once infuriatingly unpredictable to him have formed some strange and random rhythm in his own heart — Rey might have been an anomaly, and enigma, an unsolvable riddle, but he knows her now, whether she likes it or not. 

 

Once her seatbelt is buckled, he hands her the water bottle and the box of crackers. “Eat,” he says, revving up the car. True to her word, it starts up again. A tiny miracle in a day of defeats. 

 

* * *

 

For the first hour, they barely talk at all. Rey stares straight ahead at the road, as if she is the one driving, not him. He pushes her toward the water and the crackers every now and then, both to sober her up and because he strongly suspects that she hasn’t eaten a square meal in a long time. But other than that, for a long while it is nothing but open stretches of tree-lined highways and the sun settling down further into the sky. 

 

“How long has this been going on?” Ben asks, once the world is pitch black and it feels like there is a little less weight to everything they say to each other. 

 

Rey is crouched in the passenger seat with her knees on the dash and her arms crossed over her chest. When she doesn’t answer for a moment he thinks she might be asleep. 

 

“A few months,” she says quietly. A few beats pass, and she corrects herself: “Maybe a little longer.” 

 

He processes this, the road demanding too much of his attention to overreact the way he did in the parking lot. 

 

“And David doesn’t know?” 

 

It takes Rey a moment to shake her head. His anger with David is so immediate that it takes Ben a much longer moment to ask his next question. 

 

“So … what is it? What’s wrong?” 

 

She stares out the window on her side now, instead of straight ahead. He knows she will answer eventually, and so he waits. And waits. And waits. And then — 

 

“Did you ever play car games when you were little?” she asks feebly. 

 

His answer is swift: “Don’t avoid the question.” 

 

She answers as though she hasn’t heard him. “I used to play them with Finn,” she says. “Sometimes on the weekends we’d go for long drives. Not too far, of course. But just long enough that I …” 

 

She doesn’t finish the sentence, but she doesn’t have to. It is strange how after all this time he can still feel the ache in Rey’s chest as if it is his own; he wonders how and when he became so inextricably tied to her, that the slightest lilt in her voice or deflation of her chest could move him, could somehow subtly echo the same insecurity and doubt that has settled into his own bones since he can’t remember when. 

 

“Sometimes I just …” 

 

They’re pulling close to an exit he knows they need to take, but he suddenly wishes they weren’t. He doesn’t want her to stop now. 

 

“I’m just …” She swallows, and stares straight ahead again. “I don’t — I mean — I am lucky. To have the friends that I have, and to be able to do what I love … in a lot of ways, I’m luckier than I’ve ever been.” She takes a breath, and he can sense the way that her eyes close, even if he can’t see it. “It’s just — that it could be gone so fast.” 

 

He doesn’t let himself register the self-hatred he feels for saying it. “David loves you,” he tells her. “I’m sure he isn’t going anywhere.” 

 

Rey still hasn’t opened her eyes, taking a breath so weary that it seems far beyond her years. “David loves the person he thinks I am,” she says lowly.

 

Ben purses his lips, and tells her the same thing he told her a year ago. “Maybe you should tell him the truth, then.” 

 

She leans her head against the window. “I thought if I … I thought I could make a different truth,” she says. There is a distinct heaviness in her voice now, the motion of the car lulling her to sleep. “I thought I could be better.” 

 

“Rey,” he says, trying not to sound as upset as he is. “You shouldn’t have to change yourself for anybody.” 

 

She hums a little in response, the sound of it sweet and sad. 

 

_ You’re perfect just the way you are _ . 

 

It’s only been a year, but it’s enough time for him to know his place and to hold his tongue. The words die before he can let them fully form in his head. 

 

In another few minutes her breathing slows, and he knows without checking that she’s out. He can tell by the state of her that it has been a long time since she has gotten any sleep, so he doesn’t say anything for the rest of the drive, his headlights trained on the infinitely empty and all-too-familiar road ahead. 

 

* * *

 

They arrive around nine o’clock at night. Rey is so fast asleep and pale in the passenger seat that she might have been dead, if it weren’t for the steady rise and fall of her chest and the faint sound of her breath. He feels bad waking her; he remembers the way she would stay up all night in his apartment that week she stayed with him, wide awake even in the pre-dawn hours. 

 

“Hey,” he says, touching her shoulder the barest amount. “We’re here.” 

 

Her eyelids flutter, the dark circles under her eyes somehow more pronounced than ever. She blinks a few times as her eyes adjust to the night and looks over at him. “Here?” 

 

He unbuckles his seatbelt, and for the first time, feels a pang of uncertainty. Two hours ago when they started driving this seemed like the only solution; now it is dark, and with the darkness the doubt presses uncomfortably under his skin. 

 

“Come on,” he says, dismissing it. 

 

Rey gets out and follows him hesitantly up the driveway. The porch lights flicker on before they reach the door; the door itself opens before he even can think about gathering up the nerve to knock. And there, in the doorway, stands the only person Ben trusts to help. 

 

His mother stands there, still in her work clothes, wide awake — staring at him, then at Rey, then back at him. 

 

Finally she smiles in that weary, knowing ways of hers. “I’ll go make some tea.” 

 

* * *

 

“I see what you mean about her.” 

 

An hour later he is sitting at the kitchen table with his mother, talking in the dim light. Rey is in the guest bedroom in the basement, bewildered but taking everything in stride, accepting the enormous sweatpants Ben brought from his apartment as pajamas and looking altogether too embarrassed and exhausted to ask any more questions. 

 

“Yeah,” says Ben with a grim smile. 

 

Rey and his mother barely exchanged a few words when she walked in, but it was almost wrenching to watch — not the moment of palpable shock when Rey realized where Ben had taken her and who his mother was, but the moment it struck her that this woman who didn’t even know her was willing to accept her into her home and genuinely cared. 

 

He understands Rey well enough that under any other circumstances he knows she would protest, she would try to shrug off the kindness in an attempt to guard herself and not owe anybody anything —  and that’s exactly why he brought her here. If there’s anything in this world he can count on, it’s that his mother knows exactly how to shut down that impulse, in that firm and gentle way of hers. She has a way with words that he apparently didn’t inherit. And now, miraculously, Rey is asleep in the guest room, and he is sitting here with this almost eerie sense of calm that his mother has the ability to set her right. 

 

She squares her shoulders as if she is reading his thoughts. “So,” she says. “Tell me what’s wrong.” 

 

Ben takes a breath that turns into a sigh. “I’m … not even really sure where to start.” 

 

His mother’s smile is small and wry. “Let’s pick up from the last time you showed up at my door bent out of shape about this girl, shall we?”

 

He isn’t sure why, but he has to laugh.  

 

* * *

 

 

Ben wakes up the next morning later than he meant to, but that’s always the case when he comes home. There is some unconscious comfort in the familiar surroundings that makes him almost dangerously at ease here — even if those familiar surroundings make him cringe in the morning light. He sits up on his old bed in his childhood and teenage room, surrounded by angsty band posters and abandoned textbooks, disorganized records and the remains of the remote control planes he and his father used to fly shoved into the closet. He forgets how much  _ stuff _ of his is here until he is actually looking at it, marveling that his mother hasn’t just taken the liberty of setting it all on fire yet. 

 

Despite the late hour, he can’t deny his exhaustion. He was up late last night, even long after he unceremoniously spilled a year’s worth of guts out to his mother, even long after he explained his mounting worry for Rey’s situation. 

 

“Why did you bring her here?” his mother asked him at one point — not judgmentally, not critically, but genuinely curious. 

 

For the first time that night, his throat felt thick. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat. It’s almost like an apology, and certainly not the one she deserved after all he put her through in his youth. “When I … when I was pushing everyone away — when I felt like nobody could fix me — well,” he said gruffly, not sure whether to look at her or the table. “You did.” 

 

When he finally did look up, he could see the watery shine in his mother’s eyes. He felt an instant pang of regret — he hadn’t meant to make her cry, god only knew how much of his life he had spent trying to undo the times he had — but then she reached across the table and took his hand. 

 

“Just in case you don’t already know,” she told him, “I could not be more proud of the man you’ve become.” 

 

Even now, the morning after, the words feel like an unexpected blow — like there are parts of his body still shifting into place, rearranging themselves to react to the sentiment. He cannot reconcile the way his mother sees him now with the way he still sees himself.

 

He tries to shake off the sleepiness and the disorientation, throwing on a pair of jeans and splashing some water on his face. He has the distinct sense that Rey and his mother have been long awake even before he quietly pads out of his bedroom, but the house is completely silent. He takes a few steps toward the kitchen and seas some remnants of tea and half a pan of scones — his eyes unconsciously drift toward the patio, and he can see the backs of their heads, Rey and his mother, sitting in the early morning sunshine. 

 

As he draws closer to the window to grab one of the leftover scones, he can hear the murmuring of their voices back and forth. Rey is sitting in one of the wicker chairs with her knees tucked into her chest, clutching a mug; his mother is sitting cross-legged beside her. It strikes him as odd how at ease they seem with each other without him.

 

“But what do I do now?” 

 

The words seem so vulnerable on Rey’s lips. He can think of a lot of times he has decided to give her advice, but can’t think of a time before now that she has ever asked for it from someone else. 

 

He nearly holds his breath, barely moving so the two of them won’t hear him there. 

 

“I think you already know,” says his mother gently. 

 

Rey shakes her head into her knees. “I fit there,” she says. “It makes sense.” 

 

“I think you fit in a lot of places, Rey,” says his mother. “I think that’s something you learned to do very young. I think that’s how you survived.” 

 

Rey’s eyes snap up to meet his mother’s, flinching at the revelation. Ben edges back to toward the counter to make sure he is out of her sightline. 

 

“But you’re not happy,” says his mother, “or you wouldn’t be doing this to yourself.” 

 

Rey blinks a few times, casting her eyes away. Then she says something that Ben is almost certain he has misheard, has conjured out of the wind: “He’s a good man,” says Rey softly. “I don’t want to hurt him.” 

 

While Ben’s heart is shuddering in his chest, his mother is remarkably calm. “If he is as good a man as you say, then knowing what this is doing to you would hurt him more.” 

 

When Rey shakes her head again, this time it is emphatic, denying. “But he’s not the problem,” she says. “ _ I _ am. I’m the one who can’t just — I can’t settle, I can’t be normal, I can’t …” She swipes impatiently at her eyes with the inside of her arm, irritated by her own tears. “I’ve already messed so many things up. I don’t want this to be one more.” 

 

“Oh, Rey,” says his mother, with an empathetic laugh. “You’re going to mess up so many things in your life. I promise you that.”

 

Rey bristles a bit, but when she looks up and catches his mother’s eye, she lets out a watery little laugh, too. “Oh,” she says wryly. “Good.” 

 

His mother leans in closer and touches her arm. Rey flinches almost imperceptibly, but his mother doesn’t move her hand away, seeming to wait a second for Rey to relax under her touch.  

 

“You shouldn’t be worried about that,” says his mother. “What worries me is that right now you’re talking like someone who is finished. Like someone whose future is set in stone.” He can hear the smile in her voice. “Trust me — this is only the beginning.” 

 

Ben leaves the kitchen then, because suddenly the same words that are soothing Rey seem to itch at him somewhere under the skin.  _ This is only the beginning _ . He yanks the nozzle of the shower, sheds yesterday’s clothes and stands stupidly under the spray, coming to his senses. 

 

He has to factor himself out of this equation. Selfishly, privately, he knows that he has been letting himself hope for things that he shouldn’t — that she still might have feelings for him; that he isn’t imagining the strange and persistent magnetism between them; that if she ever broke things off with David that maybe there would be a chance for the two of them. Even in the moments he has been professing to help her, even in bringing her here, he let himself bring that quiet hope along. 

 

But it isn’t his place. His mother is right — Rey is just beginning. It’s  _ Ben _ whose life is already set in stone. Even if she calls the wedding off, even if she comes back to her senses and applies to medical school and does everything she aspired to do, If he let himself tell her the truth about the way he felt now, he would only be holding her back — and he has too much faith in her to dare. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bless you beautiful precious lovely starshine-y rainbow-souled fellow Reylo shippers. Your comments make my whole LIFE. Thank you to those of you who wished me luck over the weekend (we didn't suck! HOORAY!!), and thank you guys for being so patient with me about getting this next chapter up. My rehearsals are finished now, so hopefully I'll have LOTS more time to write. 
> 
> (That being said ... I think we've got about two chapters to go. So STAY TUNED, fellow nerds.)


	15. Chapter 15

“That girl loves you.” 

 

Ben is hugging his mother goodbye when she says it. Rey is already arranging herself in the passenger seat of his car, the sun beginning to set on a long and lazy day. He has long since let himself relax — drinking iced tea with his mother and Rey on the porch, reading a book in the sunshine when the two of them went off on a hike in the neighboring woods together, helping his mother and Rey make salmon for dinner in the kitchen. 

 

Now, though, he freezes as if his mother has trained a gun to his head. 

 

“Why would you say that?” he asks her lowly. 

 

He’s not asking her to explain what made her see it — he’s asking her why she would even mention it in the first place, when she must know how hopeless his situation is, how hard it already is for him to walk away. But his mother holds him there for an extra beat and makes him listen anyway. 

 

“The way she looks at you when you walk into a room,” she tells him. “That right there is what love is.” 

 

He tries not to think of his mother’s words on the way back home, as Rey fidgets and shakes slightly in the passenger seating, attempting and failing to pretend she isn’t suffering withdrawal symptoms from the alcohol. When he hazards a glance at her, her face is pale but her eyes are bright, with a kind of fire returned to them that he recognizes from when he first met her. 

 

“Do you need me to pull over?” he asks. 

 

She shakes her head. “No, I’m good.” 

 

He waits for a moment and says, “Well, let me know if you do.” 

 

She nods and hikes her knees up to her chin, her eyes trained on the open road in front of them. The silence is different from their recent ones, easy and familiar, the way it used to be when they studied together or sat in the coffee shop on her breaks. He isn’t expecting her voice to break through the quiet, graceless and effusive. 

 

“Thank you,” she blurts — and then takes a breath like she’s going to say something, and sighs it out quickly like she is trying to take back something that hasn’t even been said yet. 

 

His lip quirks up. “You’re welcome,” he says. “It was … a good day.” 

 

“It was,” she says, almost a little dreamy. “But — but not just for this, and for your mom, and for … for today.” She swallows hard, and for a moment he’s worried she’s going to throw up, until he realizes she is just struggling to get the words out. “I mean — thank you for … for being my friend.” 

 

She says the last bit with the tiniest little break in her voice, one that threatens to tip him over a ledge he has been standing on the edge of since the day her met her. The word “friend” is so precious, so reverent in her voice, that for the first time, being nothing more than that is truly enough. It feels like an honor. It feels like a privilege. And when he considers just how few people she has let under her skin, he knows that it is. 

 

He wishes he could put a hand on her shoulder, or even look her in the eye, but the road demands too much of his attention. “Thank you for trusting me,” he says instead. 

 

He can hear the smile in Rey’s voice. “Always.” 

 

* * *

 

There’s a missed call from Poe when Ben gets back to his apartment. He and Rey have already wordlessly decided she is staying with him tonight, so Ben calls Poe back while Rey is in the shower and explains the situation as delicately as he can. 

 

“Shit,” says Poe, quietly enough that Ben figures he is trying to make sure Finn doesn’t hear him. “She hasn’t been herself, and I had a bad feeling, but I didn’t have any  _ idea _ that she…  _ shit _ .” 

 

“It’s okay,” says Ben quickly. “I mean — she’ll be okay.” 

 

“You think?” 

 

It is strange to be an authority on Rey to a person who has known her much longer, who has lived with her, who knows all of her insecurities and quirks. “Yeah, I do,” he says. 

 

“Ben, I can’t thank you enough,” says Poe, with the kind of sincerity that would sound fake from anyone else. “It’s just been so crazy lately, with Finn and the accident, and Rey visiting so infrequently … I’m so angry at myself. I should have realized. I should have — ”

 

“No,” says Ben quickly. He is usually at a loss for words, unsure of how to comfort people outside of the context of the ER, but in the last day he seems to have found his voice. “She didn’t want you to know, so you didn’t. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

 

He talks to Poe for another few minutes, assuring him with that same quiet confidence he has with his patients, until he hears the water turn off and Rey opening the shower curtain. By the time Rey steps out wearing his sweatpants and an old t-shirt, he has long since hung up the phone and has pulled out a bag a roll of cookie dough that is perilously close to its expiration date. Despite Rey’s exhaustion, she grins at him, tugging her wet hair into a ponytail. 

 

They settle into his couch, Rey sitting in the corner that he has come to think of as  _ hers _ , with Ben sitting in the middle of the couch beside her. They watch reruns of cooking shows, each of them poking fun at the competitors, Rey coming up with abominations of dishes they should cook while Ben gags in response. Soon enough it’s midnight, and the channel switches over to pay-per-view ads, and their attention on the television wanes. 

 

“Can I ask you something?” 

 

Ben has almost been expecting this. Well — he isn’t sure exactly  _ what _ he’s been expecting, but he’s certainly been expecting a turn in the conversation. 

 

“Of course,” he says carefully. 

 

She waits for a moment. “It’s selfish,” she tells him. 

 

He suppresses a laugh. “That’s okay.” 

 

“Did you break up with Kathryn because of me?” 

 

He is expecting it to have much more of an impact than it does. But he has been prepared for her to ask this, practically since the breakup happened; despite her hesitancy, despite the caution in her voice, it doesn’t catch him off guard. 

 

“Yes and no,” he says carefully.  “I was in love with you. But I also knew because of that that it wasn’t going to work out with Kathryn in the long term.” 

 

Rey doesn’t say anything for a few beats. When she speaks again, her voice is so low that for a moment he is afraid he has misheard her. 

 

“Was?” 

 

It takes Ben a second to understand what she is referring to. 

 

“Rey …” 

 

“I’m sorry,” she says quickly. “I’m sorry — I shouldn’t — it’s not my place, it’s long over, I know. I shouldn’t have said that.” 

 

He closes his eyes for as long as he dares, trying to get his thoughts in order before he responds. Every bone in his body is screaming against logic, is telling him to  _ act _ right now in this moment when she is clearly open and vulnerable and hoping for him to do exactly what he was wanted to do for longer than he can bear. 

 

In the end, he settles for something in between what he wants to do and what he should. 

 

“I want you to know that I will be here for you, and be your friend, no matter what,” he tells her. “I just don’t … I wouldn’t want anything I felt about you to affect the decisions you make for yourself.” 

 

As she’s considering this, it occurs to him just how perilously open-ended those words are. He isn’t sure how she is interpreting them, or how he even  _ wants _ her to interpret them. It is everything he can do not to blurt out that he still loves her; that there is a part of him that is desperately afraid that he always will, even long after she has forgotten him; that there is yet another part of him, equally loud, that wouldn’t want it any other way. 

 

He made the mistake last year of scaring her away with his honesty. Now that there is so much more at stake, he doesn’t dare make it again. 

 

“Okay,” she says, nodding with an ambiguous kind of certainty, one that he isn’t sure how to read. “Okay.” 

 

“Okay,” he echoes. 

 

She doesn’t move for a long time, and neither does she; instead she stares thoughtfully ahead, a weight in her gaze that seems to obscure whatever it is she is thinking. He isn’t so sure he would want to know what is going on in her head even if he could. 

 

“You must be tired,” he says eventually. 

 

She rouses herself from whatever thought is consuming her. “Yeah,” she says. 

 

“I’ll go grab you the blankets.” 

 

“Ben?” 

 

It occurs to him in that moment how rare it is that either of them addresses each other by their actual name; he has grown so accustomed to her teasing “Doctor Bens” that hearing her say his name so earnestly is jarring to him, like a slingshot against his heart. 

 

“Yeah?” he asks, half-poised to get up off the couch. 

 

She leans in closer to him, and then hesitates. The both of them are frozen and staring, their eyes wide and falling into each other’s; for a few heart-stopping moments he is all at once certain, hopeful, and terrified that she is going to kiss him, both validating and wrecking everything all at the same time. As much as he wants her, as much as he will always want her, he doesn’t want her like this — not this vulnerable, not this broken, not this uncertain. But he also knows that there is no part of him that could deny her anything. 

 

She does lean in, and the moment seems so inevitable that he has already resigned himself to it — but then, instead, she presses her lips to his cheek. He remembers so clearly that moment on the roof that cold New Year’s Eve, the fireworks exploding all around them, when she was nothing more than a nuisance and a mystery.  _ By the way … my name’s Rey _ . 

 

When she pulls away from him, her eyes are sweet and sad. He musters up a smile. 

 

“Good night,” he says.  

 

She burrows under the blankets he pushes toward her, leaning her head into the couch cushions, and mumbles, “Good night.” 

 

* * *

 

 

She is gone the next morning, but he already knew she would be. He is expecting a note, and he finds one in the kitchen. 

 

_ I’m catching the early morning bus upstate _ , it reads.  _ I’ll text you later. _

 

She doesn’t. 

 

Poe calls Ben later that day asking where Rey is, and he tells him as much as he knows. Poe is worried, but Ben oddly is not. He remembers the determination in her eyes as they drove back to his apartment last night. He has no idea what decision she will make, but she knows that whatever it is, it will be the right one. She is seeing clearly again. It is Ben who needs to take a step back without letting his feelings obscure the view. 

 

The next morning Ben is part of a group text:  _ Hey guys — I’ll be home soon _ . 

 

This time it’s Finn who calls, and Ben says the same things he’s been telling Poe, albeit a little more sensitively given the fact that Finn is barely off heavy medication. They are both interrupted by an incoming email from an address that Ben doesn’t recognize. 

 

“Well, fuck,” says Finn candidly, who must have his computer open as well. 

 

The email is from David’s mother. Ben only has to skim it to know that the wedding has been canceled. 

 

“We’ve got to drive upstate,” says Finn at once. 

 

“No.” 

 

“ _ No? _ ” Finn repeats, incredulous. 

 

“You got her text,” he says. “I think we’ve just got to let her do this on her own time.” 

 

There’s a pause, and then: “If you’re going to do that Ben thing you always do and get in a car and drive up there without us, I’ll probably kill you.” 

 

Ben smiles. “This time I promise I won’t.” 

 

Only after he hangs up and sits down and takes a breath does the reality of it all hit him —  _ Rey isn’t getting married _ . He is expecting the sensation of it to overwhelm him. He is expecting some chasm to open up and tear the fabric of his little world. There is more than hope now — there is potential. There is possibility. There could even be a  _ future _ . 

 

He doesn’t dare leave the apartment after he gets home from work, certain that at any moment she is going to knock and come blustering in, spilling out the news. Half of him hopes that she will, and half of him is terrified. He knows what he  _ wants _ to do, and that, it seems, is the crux of the issue. He doesn’t trust himself not to unravel at every seam so precariously holding him together, in this moment when Rey has every right to be the one falling apart. 

 

A few hours later he is jarred awake by the sound of knocking; he blearily looks at the television clock and sees that it’s well past midnight. 

 

She looks like a ghost when he opens the door, her hair all disheveled and her eyes red and bloodshot and her blouse all wrinkled. 

 

“Jesus,” he says. “Come inside. You’re shaking.” 

 

“I did it,” she says, as if she hasn’t heard him. “I called off the wedding.” 

 

It only occurs to him then that Rey probably doesn’t know about David’s mother e-mailing all of the guests. “I know,” he says. 

 

“Oh.” 

 

She’s in the apartment at least, but still hovering by the door as he closes it behind her, as if half of her mind is still outside and half of it is considering fleeing at any moment. He realizes he is hovering too, not quite sure what he should do, or what she even wants him to do. She is too many things at once — electric, and sad, and ashamed, and relieved, all of it edged with a desperation that is now quaking in her hands, blinking in her too wide eyes. 

 

He asks a stupid question. “Are you okay?” 

 

Rey doesn’t seem to have an answer. “David is …” She swallows. “He’s so upset.” 

 

Ben nods carefully. “But are  _ you _ okay?” 

 

She runs a hand through the tangle of her hair. “Yes,” she says, almost automatically, and then: “No. I feel terrible. For what I did to him, for the way I left, so close to the wedding, I just …” 

 

_ Do you regret it? _ he almost asks. Just in time he realizes what a loaded question it is, and how self-serving it sounds. She doesn’t have to justify herself to him. But still, as she stands shifting her weight between her feet in his doorway, he can’t help but wonder what she came here for. 

 

As if she is reading his thoughts, she takes a shuddering breath and seems to square her shoulders. “Ben, I came to say goodbye.” 

 

His throat is suddenly dry. This is not the conversation they were supposed to be having, not the one he prepared himself for. 

 

“Goodbye?” he manages. “Rey — where the hell are you going?” 

 

Only then does the smallest shadow of a grin start to curl on her face. “Everywhere,” she says, with a spark in her eye. She hugs her arms to herself in a way that would look slightly manic to anyone else, but is so reminiscent of her old recklessness that he is almost comforted by it. “I saved up money from the coffee shop and all my odd jobs. I’m going to backpack through Europe this summer.” 

 

“You are,” he says. He meant to ask it as a question, but it comes out mangled in his throat. 

 

“My flight leaves in a few hours,” she says, and only then does he notice the backpack strapped to her. “Poe is driving me to the airport.” 

 

“I could have done that,” he says defensively, trying to regain control of a conversation that seems to be spiraling into some alternate reality. 

 

“I know,” she says, “I know, and I … I thought it would be easier this way.” 

 

He realizes then that Poe’s car is parked in the lot, and that he must be waiting for Rey to come back out. The flight leaves in a few hours, but Rey is leaving right now. 

 

“Easier?” he repeats. 

 

She cocks her head at him like he should already understand. “I was afraid if I saw you again, I'd ...” She takes a step toward him, the scent of her filling the air around him, something flowery and subtle and  _ Rey _ . When she braces her arms on his shoulders he almost flinches, surprising at the steadiness in her touch, the searing light in her eyes. “I can’t be here right now. I have to leave.” 

 

His throat is thick. The moments are moving too fast, too fast for him to keep up with him. Already he is five minutes, ten minutes, a month away from this moment, looking back on it and feeling furious with himself for all the things he didn’t think to say. 

 

“You’re going by yourself?” he asks. “Rey, have you ever been out of the  _ state? _ ” 

 

She steps back with a laugh. “No,” she says, with a trademark grin that he hasn’t seen in a long time. “I haven’t."

 

It is the same kind of recklessness that used to strike fear in him, that used to keep him awake at night in the weeks he first knew her. He thought he had finally let that dynamic go, but here it is again, creeping under his skin. There is something not right about this, about the way she is going so quickly, so heedlessly, without anybody else or any kind of plan. The way she seems to be throwing away all of her savings; the way she doesn’t seem to be coming back. 

 

“Don’t start,” she says, but there is something affectionate in her voice. “We both know I can handle it.” 

 

All he can manage is a nod.  _ It’s okay _ , he told Poe and Finn hours ago. He was the one who let this happen, the one who, in a way, signed off on it before she even decided to go. He had no idea that he was only helping push her further out the door. 

 

“Besides,” she says. “I’ll be back in September.” 

 

“You will?” he asks, too quickly, too hopefully. 

 

She reaches into the back pocket of her jeans, and hands him a folded piece of paper that looks like it has seen better days. He stares at her curiously for a moment, but she just nods at him to open it. 

 

“It’s an acceptance letter,” he says. 

 

“I applied, before David proposed,” she says quietly. “I never told him I got in, but …” 

 

Ben doesn’t answer, staring at the letter as if he is hallucinating it. He sees Rey waffling uncertainly, and realizes that a few crucial, awkward seconds have passed. He should have reacted by now, but his body can’t seem to catch up to his brain. 

 

“Anyway,” she says, clearing her throat, “it turns out you’ll get a bum deal on loans if you have a bunch saved up, so I just figured I should, uh, go to Europe while I — ”

 

She doesn’t finish the sentence, too stunned when he wraps his arms around her, so tightly that her feet leave the hardwood floor. She laughs, the sound of it bright and jarring in his ear. When he puts her down they are both a little breathless, a little red-cheeked, and standing a little too close. 

 

“I’m — I’m so  _ glad _ ,” he says, a dumb grin on his face. 

 

It’s enough to cut the tension, however brief it was. “You say that now,” she says. “You’ll be taking it back when I start bugging you during exams.” 

 

He considers saying something quippy, something sarcastic, but instead he says, “I can’t wait.” 

 

She presses her lips into this proud kind of smile.

 

“You’re really okay?” he asks her one last time. 

 

She shrugs in this small way that seems to say,  _ I will be _ . “Are you?” 

 

He isn’t, and he won’t be. He understands what is happening here. It’s like his mother said — this is only Rey's beginning. This is the part where he steps back and lets Rey become the person she was always meant to be, lets her have the life she deserves — lets himself accept that he is lucky to be in that life at all, even if it is not the way he hoped. 

 

“Of course,” he says. He swallows. “I, uh — I don’t want to make you late.” 

 

“Right,” she says. 

 

But then she stands there for another few beats, and time seems to take on that slow, slippery quality it does whenever something is about to happen that he will either cherish or regret. He feels the weight of her eyes on his before he meets them. 

 

“Ben,” she says, in a voice he has never heard her use before. It is quiet, and cautious, and a little bit unsteady. She opens her mouth again, her eyes searching his face. “I know you probably don’t — I know last year was a long time ago. A lifetime ago.” 

 

“Rey — ”

 

“And I know you probably don’t feel the way you did back then anymore,” she says, taking a flimsy breath as if she is actively fighting herself to get the words out. “But I just …” 

 

This was the conversation he was prepared for, the one he was expecting some version of. And yet now that they are having it, he finds himself every bit as lost as he was afraid he would be. 

 

“Hey,” he says. “Let’s not — let’s not talk about that now.” 

 

She blinks up at him, her eyes a little watery. “Oh,” she says. “Okay.” 

 

“Go on your adventure,” he says. 

 

He wants to reach out and tuck the stray hair behind her ear. Wants to nudge his hand under her chin and kiss her. Wants to hold her here, and wake up to her snoring, and spend days on days on days wasting time on his couch, laughing in his kitchen, walking on this street.

 

She smiles at him, a tear streaking down her cheek with unexpected speed. “I will,” she says, her voice steady enough that he doesn’t worry. “I’ll, uh — I’ll send you dumb postcards.” 

 

He nods. “I’ll see you soon,” he tells her. “Take care of yourself.” 

 

She presses her lips together, and hoists the backpack further up on her shoulders. “You too.” 

 

He watches the headlights to Poe’s car flash back on as they pull out of his parking lot and into the night. He knows he should feel uncertain, should feel scared, and should even feel heartbroken. But he can still see that spark in her eye and hear the wonder in her voice —  _ Everywhere _ , she told him —  and all of the pain and self-pity he feels is drowned by an overwhelming sense of relief. 

  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not even shitting you, you guys, I ran 14 miles today. I was gonna run 6 and I was like, eh, I bet I could keep going, and then I turned into a straight up mutant and before I knew it I was running trash. All of this is to say I did NOT realize that following this up with two mimosas would make my very tired body feel EXTREMELY DRUNK IN THE MIDDLE OF THE DAY, which is why this chapter is super late tonight — but TRUE TO MY WORD, it is updated (SOBERLY). We have one chapter left to go, and I cannot thank you guys enough for embarking on this nerdy journey with me :). 
> 
> I'm going to start taking requests for one-shots at heyloreylo on Tumblr again (it's a side blog because I actually have a semi-professional presence on Tumblr, so please do not be sad if I don't follow you back, because for some reason it won't let me??). Anyway, I mostly am into modern AUs these days, but hit me with whatever ya got.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter is long AF. I blacked out and just, like, wrote all day long. I don't know what else went on in the world today. Godspeed.

The postcards come all summer long, alternating between Finn, Poe, and Ben. Finn gets London and Barcelona; Poe gets Amsterdam and Berlin; Ben gets Paris and Rome. (Finn also gets one where Rey confesses she has no idea where the hell she is, but the food is delicious, which Finn smartly keeps to himself until Ben gets Vienna and she is clearly accounted for.)

 

They’re all waiting for her in baggage claim the Sunday morning in September when she returns. He finds himself anxiously scanning the crowd every few seconds, afraid that he will miss her, but that proves wholly unnecessary — she rockets out of the escalators and lunges at Finn with such speed and aggression that it’s a miracle that airport security doesn’t come after her, especially when the two of them quite literally fall to the ground like a couple of seven-year-olds, laughing and half-hugging and half-hitting each other.

 

“Alright, alright,” says Poe, grinning as he hoists Rey up off of Finn and pulls her into a hug.

 

“Hi, hi,” she says breathlessly, ecstatically, and before Ben can feel like the awkward third wheel, she whips around and beams at him, then pulls him into a hug so fierce that it knocks the air out of his lungs.

 

“I missed you,” she says, so lowly that he knows Finn and Poe couldn’t have heard, that the words are meant only for him.

 

He smiles into her hair. “I’m glad you’re back.”

 

* * *

 

He hadn’t realized just how suspended his life seemed to be until Rey is back in it. She starts classes the next day, and the two of them fall back into their old rhythm, Rey studying as Ben finishes up paperwork. The four of them manage to squeeze in a few weekend camping trips before it gets too cold. They bike, they go on runs, they go to the farmer’s market together. Ben may not live with the three of them, but he is undoubtedly part of the pack now, in the little fragmented family that Rey and Finn created.

 

He doesn’t actually spend that much time alone with Rey, so there isn’t much time to pine. They do decide to take a cooking class together, mostly so Ben doesn’t die of scurvy from eating grilled cheese every night and Rey doesn’t burn down her apartment like some past attempts threatened to. They’re both pretty terrible at it, but Finn and Poe are generous about pretending to like the results, even if Ben definitely caught Poe sneaking a box of Wheat Thins into his bedroom after their eggplant lasagna creation.

 

One afternoon he and Rey are on his couch watching a new surgical procedure when there is a distinctive knock on the door — just one, short knock that he knows even through the wood could only belong to one person. Ben tenses, unsure if he is happy or annoyed. Rey looks at him curiously as he gets up from the couch, not even realizing the sound was someone at the door, and looking even more confused when Ben opens it to reveal a man standing in it.

 

“Dad,” says Ben, reminding himself to smile.

 

His father claps him on the back. “Looking good, Ben,” he says, walking in as if it’s his apartment. “I was on the way back home, and I thought I’d drop by and — oh. Who’s this?”

 

“Rey,” she says at once, knowing full well that if she waited for Ben to introduce her it was going to take him at least another five seconds to get his act together. She pulls out her hand for him to shake and his father takes it, cocking an eyebrow at Ben as he does.

 

“We’re friends — from, uh,” says Ben, because he’s not really sure how to explain her, or how much his mother has told his father about that weekend they spent upstate a few months ago.

 

“We met at the coffee shop,” says Rey smoothly. “And now we, uh — watch gross medical stuff,” she says, finding the remote and turning off the image of some poor sucker’s heart cavity.

 

“Right,” says his father. Ben deliberately looks away from him when he turns around, but he still doesn’t miss his father’s obnoxious wink, and he has a feeling Rey hasn’t either. “Well, if you two are busy, I’ll get out of your hair — ”

 

“No,” says Rey before he can stop her, “not at all.”

 

And so his father settles in on the couch, Rey rapt with attention, his father clearly enjoying a new audience to regale with his latest hijinks on the road. He tells her some about the old days, when he raced cars and ran betting pools, before Ben was born and his mother nudged him into a safer trade. He’s finishing up telling her about the vintage car sales company he runs now when Rey’s eyes light up, and she mentions in an almost accusatory way that Ben never mentioned it to her.

 

“Well, when your mother’s a state senator I imagine car sales is a little less worth bragging about at the bar,” his father remarks with a smirk.

 

Rey laughs and Ben cringes, remembering how he had failed to mention that the first time Rey and his mother met. It seems that Rey has forgiven him for that initial awkwardness, because she brushes past it easily.  

 

“Oh my god,” says Rey a few minutes later, when she looks out the window and sees the sports car that his father pulled up in earlier. “Is that a 1974 Karmann Ghia?”

 

He sees his father’s brow lift into his greying hair. “You really know your cars.”

 

“It’s beautiful,” says Rey.

 

“You wanna take a ride in it?”

 

Rey’s grin is impish. “Can we go right now?”

 

Ben rolls his eyes at her good-naturedly, feeling a bit of his habitual impatience with his father dissolve at the sight of her near skipping to the bright yellow clunker in the parking lot. He settles into the couch with his book, knowing that his father’s idea of “taking a ride” meant that they’d be gone for an hour, at least; sure enough, he doesn’t hear the growl of the engine for an hour and a half, when he pokes his head out the window to see a very jubilant Rey in the driver’s seat.

 

“Jeez,” says Ben, smirking at his dad. “He _still_ doesn’t let me drive.”

 

“This one’s a natural with a stick,” says his father, so proudly that if it were anyone but Rey, Ben might actually be a little jealous.

 

“We didn’t forget about you,” says Rey, holding up a bag of fresh bagels from a shop front that Ben knows is at least a forty minute drive from here.

 

They eat together and his father lingers for another half hour or so before he has to get back on the road to meet up with his mother for dinner. He opens the door to leave and Rey bounds out to look at the car one more time, muttering to herself about fixes she could do to make the engine less noisy, when his father turns to him with an unexpectedly serious expression on his face.

 

“Marry her,” he deadpans.

 

It is so unexpected that Ben laughs out loud. He is too content right now to let it dig into him in the way that it should.

 

“It was good to see you, Dad,” he says sincerely.

 

“Good to see you too, kid,” his father says in that gruff way of his, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Visit more. And bring the girl.”

 

“I’ll do what I can.”

 

* * *

 

In January they all take off a Friday from work and classes and fly to San Francisco for Kathryn’s wedding. The weather is perfect, a crisp 65 degrees, practically a sauna compared to the chill back home. Ben wears a navy blue suit he has for conferences, and Poe and Finn clean up well in their own suits, the three of them looking unexpectedly classy for once. But it’s Rey who steals the show in a simple pink dress with a little bow in the back, and a pair of white heels he knows she borrowed from one of the girls in her classes.

 

The wedding itself is gorgeous and rather painless, compared to the dozen other weddings Ben has attended. The ceremony is short, and the reception close by. Kathryn insists on cutting the cake early in the evening, renouncing the idea of anyone having to wait for dessert. By six o’clock most of the wedding party is drunk, with the exception of Rey and Finn, who are boogeying on the dance floor with sugar highs that would make any dentist weep.

 

“Weddings are the _best_ ,” he overhears Rey saying to Finn at one point.

 

“Yeah, seriously,” says Finn, “I don’t know why Poe is so over weddings, I could this every _week_.”

 

Poe exchanges a look with Ben that only a thirtysomething man who has been dragged out to several dozen of these affairs could understand. Still, Rey and Finn’s enthusiasm is infectious, and before the two of them know it they are getting dragged out onto the dance floor with them. Rey tries and fails to teach Ben the steps to the Wobble, which ends with him blushing furiously and Rey cackling at his overly-tall clumsiness without mercy.

 

They are so wrapped up in it that neither of them are prepared for the music to suddenly shift and the lights to dim. He recognizes the opening notes to “The Way You Look Tonight” and freezes, watching in the periphery as people unconsciously couple up or leave the dance floor, as Poe and Finn lean into each other and start to sway without a word.

 

Rey clears her throat. “I, uh,” she manages. “I’m bad at slow dancing.”

 

Even though he was about to beg off by saying the exact same thing, he finds himself answering, “You can’t be bad at it. You just — move your feet back and forth.”

 

“I’d step on you.”

 

“I’d live.”

 

She smirks at him as if it’s a challenge, and maybe it is. It’s something about the energy of the room, something about the quiet sway of everyone nearby, something about the flush in her full cheeks against the pink of her dress. He forgets himself for a moment, forgets the careful barrier between the two of them, and takes her waist. Her small presses into his and there is something so miraculous about it that for a moment he doesn’t just forget to move, but forgets to breathe.

 

The song seems to last an eternity. He has imagined himself with Rey before, imagined them sharing this kind of closeness, but he never realized he was imagining it all wrong. He wasn’t anticipating how little she will feel in his arms, or the quickness of her breath against his chest. He wasn’t imagining the warm weight of her hand on his shoulder, or the self-conscious way her eyes would flit up to his and smirk like they have some kind of secret the rest of the room would never understand.

 

He didn’t imagine how easy it would be. How perfectly she would fit, and how thoughtlessly they would fall into a rhythm together. How it would seem so natural that they would forget to stop when the music did.

 

Finn clears his throat, and Rey takes a step back.

 

“See?” says Ben hastily, loudly, as if he needs everyone to hear how aggressively platonic this is. “You don’t suck at this.”

 

“You either,” she says, lightly nudging him in the shoulder with a fist.

 

The whole thing is so ridiculous and awkward that they immediately retreat back to the dessert table, before they can make more of a spectacle of themselves. Rey mumbles something about using the bathroom, and Ben is relieved to have a few moments to gather himself up, wondering when on earth he started to _sweat_ in this stupid suit.

 

“Enjoying the party?”

 

It’s Kathryn. Ben turns and smiles at her. She is a vision in her dress, every bit as elegant and classic as he knew she would be, her red hair braided like a halo around her head.

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Congratulations.”

 

“Thank you,” she says, glancing to look over at her new husband with a softness in her eyes. When she turns back to Ben there is something else in her expression, something a little cautious. “So are you and Rey …”

 

Ben blinks at her. She clears her throat.

 

“What?” he asks.

 

She raises her eyebrows at him as if he is the one being unclear. “Are you and Rey together?” she elaborates a little wryly.

 

“Oh,” says Ben, immediately reeling. He should have realized that’s what she was getting at, after their little display. “No, no, we’re not — god, no. We were just — uh — we’d been dancing, and the slow song came on, and you know, we just … danced.”

 

Kathryn hums a little in response. For a few moments they stand there in silence, watching the guests on the dance floor, watching the flower girl and ring bearer scurrying underfoot. Out of the corner of his eye Ben can see Rey emerging from the bathroom. Kathryn must see her too, because she picks that moment to say to Ben, “In a weird way, I can see it.”

 

Ben doesn’t trust himself to answer.

 

“Just a thought,” she says carefully — and then, because Rey is in earshot again, she adds, “It’s so good to see you both.”

 

Ben doesn’t go near the dance floor for the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

In July they all take four days off of work and go on a hiking trip up on their favorite mountain. It is insanely hot, hot even for the middle of the summer; by the end of the day, Ben isn’t sure which of his sweat is fresh and which of it has caked semi-permanently under his skin. On the second night it’s still so hot that Rey insists they all sleep outside of the tents and look up at the stars, and they all agree that the small threat of getting eaten by a bear is somehow less bearable than the idea of sweating to death.

 

Ben wakes up the third morning to find Rey reading a book and Poe and Finn gone.

 

“They’re just on a morning walk,” says Rey. “Poe said they’ll be back in an hour.”

 

“Oh,” says Ben, rubbing at his eyes to wake himself up. He sees Rey staring at him from over the pages of her book, but when he glances over at her she looks away so quickly that he might have imagined it. “I think I’ll go for a swim.”

 

Rey claps her book shut. “I’ll come with you.”

 

They pack up their stuff from the campsite and head toward the river. For once they don’t pass any hikers on the main trails; it’s early enough in the morning that it feels like they might be the only souls for miles. Ben can already feel the relief in his sweltering skin when he hears the sound of rushing water, and the sight of the river is like a god damn miracle.

 

He sets down his backpack and doesn’t hesitate, the water blisteringly cool as he walks in past his knees and down to his waist, finally wading his whole body into the shallow river. He turns to the side, expecting that Rey will have followed by now, but she is standing on the edge with her feet in the water.

 

“What are you waiting for?” he calls.

 

Rey cocks her head at him. “I can’t swim,” she says, expecting him to already know this. “I like to just sit on the edge.”

 

Ben scowls. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he says, wading back over to her. “Come on. It’ll be fine.”

 

“No, I’m good right here,” she says.

 

He climbs out of the water and grabs her hands. She looks up at him, a little startled.

 

“You trust me,” he says.

 

“Ben,” she answers, laughing. “It’s no use. Seriously. I can’t even doggy-paddle — ”

 

“So I’ll teach you,” he says. “I promise I won’t let go.”

 

It takes a few moments for her to relent. “None of that ‘oh, I think you’ve got it, I’m going to let go of the bike’ bullshit,” she warns him. “You have to _promise_ you won’t let go.”

 

He grins despite himself. “I just did, didn’t I?”

 

Rey grins back, but there is something uneasy in it that betrays her. He is so used to her bravado, her recklessness, that there is something almost laughable about seeing her afraid — it doesn’t seem to suit her, and she is terrible at hiding it. Still, she follows him into the water, Ben making sure to slow his pace so she can ease herself into the idea of it. When they’re in about as far as their waists the current picks up a bit and she freezes.

 

“I’ve got you,” he reminds her.

 

“Yup,” she says, nodding to herself, staring down at the water. She still doesn’t move.

 

For a moment they stand there, listening to the rush of the water, to the chirping of distant birds. Rey clutches to his hand so fiercely that he may soon lose the feeling in his fingers.

 

“What are you afraid of?” he asks.

 

“I’m not afraid,” she says at once.

 

Ben bites back a laugh. “Okay,” he says. “But if you were.”

 

She bites her lip and looks up from the water into his eyes. “I used to … I used to have nightmares. About drowning,” she says.

 

Ben nods patiently. Not for the first time, he wonders more about the specifics of the car accident that killed her parents; he knows better than to press her, better than to ask, but whatever happened, he knows that she was in the car with them that night.

 

“The water is shallow here,” he tells her. “We’ll go slow. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

 

She steels herself again, and they take another few steps forward, Rey shivering as the cold water rises up around them. She is still clutching her hand in his when she reaches a small dip in the ground beneath them and sinks a few inches — he’s got her by the waist at once, but she still yelps, her arms scrambling up his shoulders and wrapping around his neck like he’s a tree.

 

“Sorry, sorry,” she says, clearly wanting to let go but too freaked out to do it just yet.

 

It occurs to him that they are both mostly naked right now, that the skin of her exposed stomach is pressed against his, that yet again they are in a compromising position as close as they have ever been. He wills the thought aside, though.

 

“You’re okay,” he reminds her. “You can still stand here.”

 

“Right,” she says, easing her legs off of his waist and setting them back down on the ground. She sinks into the sand again, quivering, her arms still wrapped around his neck and his around her shoulders. Her eyes are wide on his, and he thinks that it’s just because she needs assurance of some kind, so he stares back as steadily as he can.

 

“Ben,” she says, his name a little fluttery coming out of her mouth.

 

She presses against him then, not with the same urgency as before, but hesitantly. He thinks for a moment that she is bracing herself to step away from him and stand on her own, but then her eyes seem to water, her brow crumpling with an expression he can’t quite read.

 

Shit. He didn’t mean to scare her. He tightens his grip around her waist, fully prepared to hoist her up and carry her back before she really starts to freak out, but then she responds to his touch so unexpectedly that for a moment he wonders if he truly is drowning, and imagining every moment of it — because it is right then that Rey uses her arms to push herself up to his height and kiss him.

 

His body doesn’t know anything else to do but to kiss her back. In an instant her legs are snaking around his torso again, and he uses one arm to hike her up under her butt, the kiss deepening with the kind of immediate intimacy of two people who have been waiting to do this for a long, long time. Every bone in his body seems to ache as she presses her fingertips into his back and drags them along the bare muscles, as he tangles his other hand in her sweaty hair, as the world seems to momentarily revolve around nothing but them and this fragile, perfect, ridiculous moment.

 

She pulls away first, pressing her forehead against his, breathing the words into his face. “I love you,” she says. “I’m sorry, I love you, I’m — ”

 

“Don’t be,” he says, kissing her chin, the side of her mouth, the top of her nose. It seems like infinity stretching out before him, and it is terrifyingly beautiful. “I love you, too.”

 

She kisses him again, and there is a fire in it that seems to burn all the way down to his toes, an aliveness that he didn’t think he was capable of feeling.

 

“Good,” she says, laughing out loud. “Now let’s go make out on dry land.”

 

He grins into her sun-speckled eyes, into the freckles on the bridge of her nose. “Deal,” he says, hoisting her up over his shoulder and practically sprinting to the shore as she lets out a giddy shriek.

 

An hour later they stumble sheepishly back to the campsite. Rey’s lips are bright red and swollen, no doubt because he hasn’t shaved since they left; even if that wasn’t a dead giveaway, they can’t seem to stop touching each other, their fingers interlacing, or his hand on the small of her back, or her head leaning into his shoulder.

 

“We have to tell Poe and Finn,” she says, “or it’ll get weird.”

 

“Agreed,” says Ben at once. “But, uh. You can be the one to do it.”

 

“Me?” she says, jokingly aghast. “But when should I — ”

 

It turns out they need not have bothered. Finn and Poe are waiting for them at the campsite, both beaming in a way that, if Ben didn’t know them, would genuinely creep him out. They have cult-level glee slapped on their faces, and are sitting on a big tree stump in complete silence as if they have been there, just like that, waiting for them to return for the better part of an hour.

 

Well, that’s that, then. Ben figures they must already know.

 

“So,” he starts out, “I guess you — ”

 

“We’re engaged,” says Poe loudly, practically jumping up from the tree stump.

 

Finn’s mouth drops. “You said we’d tell them _together_ ,” he exclaims.

 

“Yeah, but you were taking too long, and I’m too excited,” he says, yanking Finn’s left hand up and pushing it into Rey’s face. “ _Look_.”

 

Rey shrieks and hugs Finn, and then hugs Poe, and then hugs them both, and then drags Ben into the hug. It all happens in less than ten seconds, like affectionate whiplash. Ben pulls away and finds himself grinning from ear to ear, already aware that he is going to remember every infinitesimal detail of this day, every fleeting moment and impossible feeling. For once, though, he doesn’t feel the need to hold on to it, to make it last. For once, he is not scared of losing what he has; he promised not to let her go, and it’s a promise that he intends to keep forever.

 

* * *

 

Three days after Rey finishes her fourth year of med school, she is running around their apartment, yanking things out of drawers and shoving them into a suitcase without bothering to fold or organize them in any sensible manner.

 

“We’re not leaving until tomorrow afternoon,” Ben reminds her bemusedly.

 

“I know, I know, I’m just so excited,” she says. “No exams for two months _and_ we’re going on vacation.”

 

“But first,” he says, “we’re having celebratory dinner downtown, remember?”

 

“Right, right,” she says, yanking her hair into a ponytail and practically skipping over to him, planting an excited kiss on his mouth. “I’m ready.”

 

So is he, but not necessarily the same way she is. They are going out to dinner tonight to celebrate two things — first, Rey surviving another year of med school, and second, Ben starting his professorship at that very same university in the fall. But that’s not all he is hoping they’re going to celebrate tonight.

 

It’s gorgeous out, balmy and sweet. They start walking downtown in their usual pace, Rey a few inches ahead of him, occasionally slowing down a fraction of an amount for him to catch up. He takes her hand and squeezes it, wondering if she can feel his heart slamming through every vein in his body.

 

He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous. This is the only thing he has ever been sure of in his entire life.

 

He waits until they reach the park that they cut through to get to the main road, and then he tugs on her hand, stopping her. “I have something to ask you,” he says.

 

“Oh, yeah?” she counters cheekily. “I have something to ask you, too.”

 

“You do?” he says. He blinks at her in confusion — this wasn’t exactly how he pictured this moment, but then again, he has learned better than to try and predict Rey.

 

“Yeah,” she says, “but you first.”

 

The breath he takes in seems to last forever, and he is almost dizzy with the magnitude of everything it will bring.

 

“Rey,” he says, and then the grin softens a bit on her face as she seems to understand what is happening in the split second before he pulls his hand into his back pocket, before he gets down on one knee. She claps a hand to her mouth, and it’s everything he can do not to laugh at how genuinely stunned she looks, her eyes like saucers. “When I first met you — ”

 

“Yes,” she says at once.

 

He grins at her, any last nervousness he was feeling immediately dissolved. “You don’t even know what I’m asking you yet,” he teases her.

 

“Well, it’s yes no matter what,” she says, “it’s always yes.”

 

Shit. He feels his throat getting tight, his eyes starting to sting. He is not going to cry during his own damn proposal. “I’m going to do the whole thing anyway, though,” he says, trying to collect himself by joking with her, “because I rehearsed it a lot in my head, and I _did_ go to all the trouble of getting down on one knee.”

 

“Right, right,” she says, laughing through her own tears. “Okay, you’ve got the floor.”

 

She is so beautiful standing there in the warm yellow dusk, the sun gleaming in her hair, that for a moment he forgets every word he meant to say. But there they are again, flooding back like something ancient, like he has been waiting his entire life to say it.

 

“When I first met you, you terrified me,” he says. “I’d never met anybody like you before … you were fearless. Honest. A little bit insane.”

 

“Good start,” she says, kneeling down in front of him to meet his eye level.  

 

He smiles and shakes his head at her, but she is too charming for him to remind her that getting down on one knee is _his_ job. He takes a breath and continues, “I think even then, I was afraid because I knew — I knew that if I let myself love you, I would never be able to stop.”

 

She reaches out and grabs his hand, the one that isn’t sweaty and clutching the ring box.

 

“I know that it hasn’t always been easy,” he says. “And I know that we have no idea what the future holds. But it doesn’t matter — none of it matters, unless I’m with you.” He squeezes her hand and says, “I loved you then, and I love you now, and I’ll love you forever, and … and I was hoping … I … ” He takes another breath. He’s not going to fuck this up in the home stretch. “Rey, will you marry me?”

 

This time she doesn’t answer, but kisses him; they are both so close to the ground that they tip over, and she’s kissing him in the grass, giggling into his mouth.

 

“Yes,” she says. “I love you, Ben Solo.”

 

Once they’ve righted herself, he slides the ring on her finger; it was his grandmother’s, and it fits onto Rey’s finger so easily that he thinks she must have been meant to have it. She holds her hand up to the last few rays of sunlight and admires it, grinning at him.

 

“Well? What about you?” he asks, getting up to his feet.

 

“Huh?”

 

He offers her his hand to help her up and she takes it, leaping back up to her feet. He wonders idly how they’re going to explain the grass stains. “You had an important question,” he reminds her.  

 

Rey furrows her brow, and then laughs out loud. “I was going to ask you if you wanted to go to that pizza place we like,” she says. “Jeez. Way to story top me. Is our marriage always going to be like this?”

 

The word strikes him in some unexpected, happy place. Marriage. Rey is going to be his _wife_.

 

He grabs her hand and tugs her back toward town. “I can do you one better,” he says.

 

And sure enough, just the way he planned, they enter the pizza place — and there, in front booth, are Finn, Poe, and his parents, waiting for them with happy smiles. Rey squeals in delight, and the four of them all start cheering with various degrees of embarrassing enthusiasm, Finn tousling Rey’s hair and his mother actually, genuinely _crying_. He pretends to be embarrassed because if he doesn’t, he’s afraid that he’ll lose it too.

 

“Well, in case you were wondering, she said yes,” he tells them.

 

This earns him a few laughs. Rey slides into the booth beside him, resting her head on his shoulder and squeezing his hand. He looks around at these faces — the old family that he took for granted, and the new family that he doesn’t deserve, and the family that he and Rey are just beginning.

 

* * *

 

They decide to put off the wedding until Rey is finished with her internship, so she can give it all of her focus. The plan is to schedule it a year from then, before she starts her residency, when Ben has enough time off from teaching that they can go on a nice long honeymoon. They decide it will be simple — Finn, Poe, his parents, and the mutual friends they have from the hospital.

 

“If our first dance isn’t to a First Order song, though, the whole thing’s off,” Rey tells him one morning, as they discuss the details over breakfast.

 

“Darn it,” says Ben. “And I was really starting to like you.”

 

She sticks her tongue out at him.

 

“Has your cereal done something to offend you?” he asks, referencing the soggy, untouched bowl.

 

She sighs. “No, I’ve just been a bit under the weather this week,” she says, heading to the garbage disposal to toss it. “I’m sure it’s just nerves.”

 

He frowns. “Well, let me know if it gets any worse,” he says.

 

She flits over and presses her lips to his forehead. “Have a good day at work.”

 

A few hours later he is stalking through the halls to an examination room with such intensity that an intern actually squeaks in an effort to get out of his way. He pulls the door open without ceremony, relieved to see Rey blinking sheepishly at him from the examination table, but not enough to calm him down by a longshot.

 

“What the hell happened?” he demands of Hux. “Why didn’t you page me the second she was admitted?”

 

“Ben, really, it’s not that big of a — ”

 

“I didn’t page you because a resident was taking care of her before I got here,” says Hux, bristling.

 

“He took the case to be _nice_ , Ben,” says Rey warningly, “and besides, I’m f — ”

 

“Okay, fine, thanks,” says Ben to Hux, not at all nicely, “but what happened?”

 

“I’m right here,” says Rey exasperatedly.

 

“She fainted,” says Hux simply.

 

Ben’s gaze flits over to Rey. He knew something was off. He felt wary all morning, even as they were walking to work together, even as she kissed him goodbye, and he should have _known_.

 

“Are you okay?” he asks, trying to push back his panic. She is whole, she is in one piece, and she is attempting to reassure him with a smile. It isn’t working.

 

“I’m fine,” she says. “I was getting lunch with Phas and she caught me before I hit the ground.”

 

His fists are balled at his sides. “But what if she hadn’t been?”

 

“Then I would have fallen in some grass,” says Rey, shrugging. “Ben, listen — ”

 

He’s already turned his attention back to Hux. “What tests have you run? You’ve run tests, right? How long has she been here?”

 

“A half an hour,” says Hux, with barely veiled irritation. “And yes, I ran tests. Rey,” he says, nodding over at her as if Ben isn’t even there. It’s infuriating. “I’ll step out and let you two, uh … talk it over.”

 

In retrospect, Hux could not have left on a more ominous note. Ben immediately fears the worst, his mind going in a hundred horrible places. For a moment he is furious at himself for choosing medicine as a profession, because he is suddenly hyperaware of every little thing that could go wrong.

 

It doesn’t help that Rey suddenly looks more nervous than he’s ever seen her.

 

“I guess I should just spit it out,” she says, taking a breath and shaking her hands loose at her sides.

 

Ben braces himself for a blow.

 

“I’m pregnant.”

 

A beat passes. In the next few seconds he is so unsteady that he’s afraid _he’s_ going to faint.

 

“Ben?” says Rey worriedly, getting up from the examination table.

 

He blinks at her a few times, the weight of it not really sinking in. Of all the futures he has pictured with Rey, he has to admit to himself in that moment that he has almost never considered kids. They’ve never even discussed it. And sure, maybe down the road, they were going to — but with her schooling, and his job, and all of the everyday insanity, and — 

 

“Ben, say something.”

 

The only thing that doesn’t add up in this equation is that despite everything he is ridiculously, heartstoppingly, impossibly _happy_.

 

He grins at her, so widely it threatens to split his face. “The timing is terrible,” he says, practically laughing.

 

She grins back, looking all at once relieved. “The worst,” she agrees. “It got that from me.”

 

He takes a step and pulls her into him, kissing the top of her head. “God, I hope so,” he says. And then, after a beat: “Just as long as it gets my hair.”

 

* * *

 

A week away from Rey’s due date she finishes her internship. Ben starts his paternity leave, and the plan is for him to stay at home with the baby so Rey can recover and start her residency until he has to go back to work, at which point his parents have agreed to babysit until daycare is a feasible option. (Ben was only on board with this when his mother swore up and down not to leave the baby alone with his dad for more than five minutes, remarking, “How else do you think you would have survived infancy?” To which he had no choice but to trust her.)

 

It’s all worked out. They’ve turned the spare bedroom in the apartment into a nursery. Finn has bought enough stuffed animals to trigger a stuffed landslide. Poe painted the walls to look like the sky, and crafted a little bench by the window. Even Hux begrudgingly bought them a car seat, smugly telling him that it was the best model on the market and Ben would be stupid not to have bought it in the first place.

 

Now Rey is sitting in the July heat out on the apartment balcony, resting a book on the small planet that is her stomach. Every now and then Ben idly strokes it, hoping to feel a kick or some kind of rumble. They should be terrified. In a week they’re going to be parents. But oddly, he has never felt more calm.

 

“Here’s the thing,” says Rey.

 

“Hmmm?”

 

“We have this kid. And the kid’s going to be great, and probably really cute, since it’s yours and all,” she says. “But I also heard this rumor that babies are a _huge_ time suck.”

 

“Oh, really?” he asks mildly. “Huh.”

 

“Yeah, I was shocked too,” she answers. “So the thing is, I was thinking — we’re probably going to be pretty slammed on this whole wedding thing. This punk is probably going to be so cute we forget about it altogether.”

 

“Rey,” says Ben, with a slight grin. “Do you have a problem with our kid being born out of wedlock?”

 

Rey laughs. “You know I am nothing if not traditional,” she says. “No, no. I don’t mind that. But I was just thinking — well, we have this whole week. Maybe we just … invite everyone down to city hall. Get ‘er done. Have a staycation honeymoon. What do you say?”

 

She could have asked him to start building a ladder to the moon and he would have agreed. “Sounds good to me,” he says. “How’s your afternoon look?”

 

They wait a few hours for his parents to make the drive down, and that’s just enough time to haphazardly throw a shindig together. His mother grabs a white maternity dress from the outlet store on the way down. Poe gets his camera ready for pictures and orders a bunch of pizza and chicken wings for the “reception,” at Rey’s request. Finn goes into an insane cake baking frenzy. His father brings two cigars.

 

“Uh,” says Ben.

 

His father shrugs. “My dad made me do it before I married your mom.”

 

“Dad, I’m a _doctor_.”

 

“Yeah. And in a second, you’ll be a husband,” says his father. “And in a week, you’ll be a dad.”

 

His father lights the cigars and they both hold them there, standing outside the courthouse, neither of them actually taking a drag.

 

“You got this,” his dad says gruffly.

 

“Yeah?” says Ben. He doesn’t really need the assurance, but he likes hearing it just the same.

 

His father’s face is serious, for once in his life. “Yeah.”

 

Ben enters the courthouse room first so they can have some semblance of this being an actual wedding. Phas has Rey locked up in a bathroom, doing some last minute adjustments to her makeup and hair. But when Rey finally walks in holding a bouquet of store-bought wildflowers, that is the last thing he notices; instead he finds himself smiling back at that radiant, ridiculous grin of hers, and those eyes that seems to know him stronger and deeper than any person should be able to know another one.

 

She laughs and waves at him as she waddles down the aisle, Poe and Finn on either side of her. Just when he thinks he can’t love her anymore than he already does, there she goes again, proving him wrong.

 

Their vows are perfunctory, dictated by the court, but somehow still beautiful because they are the ones saying them. He holds her hands and squeezes them every so often, so comfortable in this moment, in their future, in the virtual unknown that lies ahead of them.

 

“Do you, Ben Solo, take Rey Kenobi as your lawful wedded wife?”

 

They are the easiest words he has ever said: “I do.”

 

“And do you, Rey Kenobi, take Ben Solo as your lawful wedded husband?”

 

Rey opens her mouth, and then, unexpectedly, her eyes widen into moons.

 

“Rey?” he asks.

 

She bursts out laughing, leaning her head into his shoulder, her hands still intertwined with his.

 

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she says, “it’s just, uh — my water just broke.”

 

“ _What?_ ”

 

“And also, I do,” she says. She turns to the officiator. “Can I kiss him now? We’re good?”

 

The officiator nods, looking vaguely terrified. “You may kiss the — um.”

 

Rey grabs Ben by the face and pulls him into a kiss, knowing from the look on his face that he’s far too stunned to initiate it himself. She’s still laughing as they separate, and every member of the wedding party is on their feet now, poised into battle positions.

 

“Your father went to bring the car around,” his mother says at once.

 

Poe kisses Rey on the cheek. “I’m going to go grab your go bag from your apartment.”

 

Ben has possibly never been more grateful to have these people in his life as he is in this moment now. Just as he has the thought, Rey winces and touches a hand to her stomach.

 

“You’ve got this,” he says, repeating the words his father said to him not an hour before.

 

She grins. “ _We’ve_ got this,” she says. And then with another slight wince, adds, “But let’s look into the legality of giving this kid the middle name ‘moment killer,’ shall we?”

 

Oddly, now that it’s shaped out like this, Ben couldn’t imagine it any other way.

 

* * *

 

A week later, Ben wakes up to a sound that is so familiar to him already that he might have been hearing it his whole life. Their son fusses from his bassinet, just the pre-wobble to his actual cry. Ben is already wide awake in the early morning light, carefully getting up without waking Rey, who was already up with him in the night.

 

“Hey, buddy,” says Ben, lifting him up. “Shhh, shh. You’re alright.”

 

He remembers right when Kyle was born, and they put him in Ben’s arms. How for the first split second he was so genuinely stunned by the responsibility of it — there was a whole human in his arms, and they were just going to let them _take him home_ , simple as that? It seemed surreal. He had _no earthly idea_ what he was doing, and neither did Rey.

 

And then — and then something happened, and the baby sort of sank into his arms, and raised a pudgy little fist at him. So little, so perfect, with a face just like his mother’s and a dusting of dark hair. _Theirs_.

 

Now Ben sits in this room that they’re already starting to outgrow, rocking Kyle as his eyes start to open and peer up at him. Ben can already tell from his grip that this kid is going to be a troublemaker, a little Rey 2.0. But unlike Rey, he’ll have a mother, and a father — and two uncles, and grandparents, and the small army of friends they’ve collected along the way.

 

He stares down at Rey, at the even rise and fall of her chest as the morning sun starts to creep in through the window, at her dark lashes against her pale skin. He has no idea what today will bring, or tomorrow, or the next — but he doesn’t mind. The only things that matter are right here in this little bed, in this tiny room, in these two people who took their broken pieces and built themselves a home.

 

Someday, maybe, he will tell Kyle the story of how it all happened. But right now that story is only just beginning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE. END. 
> 
> Honesty hour, I was going to end this after the kiss in the forest, but I think we have long since established that I am Reylo Trash (TM) and I have no self-control. I don't even know what the fuck happened, guys. This was supposed to be a nice, clean, coffeeshop AU, and now two months later I've secured my place in hell. HOPE TO SEE YOU THERE. 
> 
> In the meantime, I am reopening modern AU one-shot requests at heyloreylo on Tumblr. Thank you all heartily for reading this weirdness, for leaving your lovely thoughts, for encouraging me, and for basically being in the most supportive ship I have ever been in. #Bless all of your faces, and have a good night :).

**Author's Note:**

> I am incapable of writing proper one-shots, so this will be a multi-length fic. (Help.)


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